


Bimbos (or, The Fifth of May)

by Kamylove



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Author uses drag names and female pronouns throughout, Background Shalaska, Characters sometimes use boy names and male pronouns, Drug Addiction, Fuckbuddies to friends to...?, Humor, Lots of other Ru girls make appearances, M/M, Prostitution, Recovery, Slow Burn, katlaska
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 61,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25134025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamylove/pseuds/Kamylove
Summary: A what-if story. What if Katya and Alaska had met (a lot) earlier, and what if Alaska and Sharon had broken up earlier?(Inspired bythis picturewhere our heroines look really young to me.)
Relationships: Alaska Thunderfuck 5000/Katya Zamolodchikova
Comments: 45
Kudos: 64





	1. 2010

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNINGS for drug use, addiction, lots of language, not-entirely-safe sex, general emotional fucked-up-ness, and SHARON NEEDLES.**
> 
> (If that doesn’t bother you, feel free to skip the rest of this tl;dr note.)
> 
>   
> That's right. This story has Sharon Needles in it. I don't support her AT ALL, but I started this story in March 2019 and finished it in May 2020. It's 60,000 words. I posted the first chapters on Tumblr before the shit hit the fan. Sharon's not a main character in the story, but she is a big part of Alaska's character arc. I tried to go back and rename her (I was going to call her Aileen Whorenos, which frankly I still think is pretty awesome), but it felt dishonest. 
> 
> **IF SHARON IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU HIT THE BACK BUTTON NOW.** I tagged her just so you can exclude her from searches. Take care of yourself. Avoiding things you know will upset you is GOOD SELF CARE. 
> 
> That said: This is a work of FICTION. I am under no illusions that I know anything about these people and you shouldn't be under that illusion, either. The Sharon in this story is a character I created. She looks like Sharon and sounds like Sharon, but she has nothing to do with real-life Sharon or her actions.
> 
> Ahem. Back to our regularly scheduled A/N. Two things you should know:
> 
>   * "Bimbos" is from [UNHhhh episode 90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08z8y2uvMEo). I am not slut shaming anyone. I fully support all forms of sluttiness.
>   * None of these characters is in a good place at the beginning of this story. I promise it will get better, but I didn't use the "slow burn" tag for nothing.
> 

> 
> I had a lot of fun working on this story, and if you stick around, I hope you'll like it!

Katya was supposed to be trade, at first. They both were.

Alaska was a rising star in Pittsburgh, starting to get gigs out of town, and she'd been booked at Katya's home club.

She'd heard about the crazy Russian queen in Boston. She was surprised, in the tiny, smoky dressing room Katya shared with who knew how many other regulars, to learn that Katya wasn't Russian, after all. She was definitely crazy, though. Alaska had seen that on stage. The craziness continued after the show, albeit in a slight Boston accent.

While Alaska and the other girls de-dragged, Katya was keeping up some (crazy) monologue that made everyone laugh, and she turned out to be not only a nice person, but a helpful person.

Alaska liked what she saw, and she liked it even more after Katya took off her wig.

"Hey," Alaska said quietly, unsure if she was intentionally or accidentally flirting, "you're really cute."

Katya got a sly smile on her face, and turned to look Alaska in the eye. "Wanna fuck?" she asked. "I live upstairs."

Alaska wasn't single, but they were open while out of town. She knew she was going to say yes, but she winked at Katya first. "Get a lot of trade up there?"

"Got you," Katya said. Then she laughed maniacally at her own joke, and Alaska had to join in. Katya watched her with open curiosity as they laughed together, and Alaska liked that, too.

So they went upstairs, and fucked, and drank some more and fucked some more, and Katya offered some meth, but Alaska did a line of coke instead. And then they fucked some more.

"Got a place to stay?" Katya asked, yawning, as the sun rose.

"My car." Alaska shrugged. "Got to drive straight back."

So Alaska left, and that was that.

Katya didn't remember much afterwards. 

Alaska remembered **everything**.

xxx

When she'd heard Alaska was coming to the club (to Katya's fucking **house** ) Katya was already drunk, and she got even closer to passing out. She'd been the one to suggest booking Alaska, but she hadn't expected anything to come of it.

She'd seen every video of Alaska she could find on YouTube. Alaska was fucking insane, and Katya admired that in a person. Alaska did shit on stage that would make many queens gasp in horror. She wasn't Katya's type at all, physically. She was skinny, and bony, and Katya never went for other queens. But Alaska was compelling in a way that made Katya want to yank out her dick and cum all over her laptop.

She didn't, of course. That laptop, an ancient hand-me-down from her brother, was the most expensive thing she owned.

Katya propositioned a lot of men. She would proposition practically anybody who a) had a penis and b) was not repulsive. Sometimes they said yes. Sometimes they said no. It didn't really matter; she had plenty of paying customers, too. She didn't expect Alaska to say yes.

But Alaska did say yes.

And all Katya could remember was a few lines of delightfully bizarre conversation, and the curve of Alaska's dick.

She'd fucked Alaska fucking Thunderfuck--literally fucked Alaska fucking Thunderfuck--and she didn't even have the memory in her head to jerk off to.

xxx

They ran into one another again a few months later, at an event in Brooklyn, and as soon as Katya saw Alaska across the room, she cut herself off from the bar for the night.

She still smoked some meth, though. It helped her focus.

Alaska was there with a friend from Pittsburgh, who spotted Katya before Alaska did and said, "Hey, didn't you fuck her?"

"I sure did," Alaska said. "Catch you later? I'm going to try to get lucky."

Her friend laughed and waved her away.

Alaska headed in Katya's direction, and caught the moment when Katya saw her coming. Katya smirked, and Alaska smirked back.

"Hey," Alaska said as they exchanged air kisses. "I still think you're really cute, in case you were wondering."

Katya gave her a sly and sexy look Alaska remembered from last time, and said, "Is the boyfriend here?"

"Nope," Alaska said, slowly, popping the P. 

"Wanna fuck again?" Katya asked, and they laughed together like before. Their laughs were so different, but they melded like bells, two-thirds of a chord.

But they were both poor as fuck, both sleeping on floors in friends' apartments. So all they could do was go out back, behind the club, and suck one another off in full view of the smokers around the exit.

Alaska gave them the finger as they whistled and hooted at the free show.

Katya didn't blink or blush, just wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she stood up.

Alaska was pretty much floating--voyeurism was a kink she hadn't explored enough, she decided--and also extremely impressed. "Wow," she said. "You must be a professional."

Katya got a closed off look in her eyes that made Alaska's heart drop a bit, over a fucking hookup, for God's sake.

"I swear I meant that as a compliment," she said quickly. "Like you really know your way around a dick."

"Ten thousand hours of practice," Katya quipped, but it didn't seem spontaneous, more like a joke she'd made many times before. "It's impossible to insult me anyway, my opinion of myself is too low. Do you know your way around my dick?"

"I might," Alaska said as she went down.

"Wow," Katya said a minute or so later. "You, uh, you remember a lot, don't you?"

"Yeth," Alaska said, and backed off for a moment. "Do you?"

"I'll remember this," Katya said. 

At last call they exchanged numbers, but didn't use them.

xxx

The club manager liked Alaska. He liked her a lot. He invited her back twice more that year, and Katya fucked her both times. Before the show, after the show, in the morning.

Alaska still wasn't Katya's type, but she did know her way around Katya's dick. And Katya didn't have to work very hard with Alaska. It was a nice change from her usual clientele.

"You're telling me I'm a better fuck than your tricks?"

"Yup," Katya said.

"You'd give me a five-star review?"

"Enh, maybe three," Katya joked. She saw a flash of insecurity on Alaska's face, but didn't care enough to do anything about it. Instead she poured some Kahlua into her large iced, and pushed the box of Munchkins across the counter. She'd made a coffee run before Alaska woke up, as much to get a few minutes alone as to get caffeine. 

Alaska ate two donut holes, drank some tea she disapproved of, and said, "Ugh. Are there no Starbucks in this town?"

"Of course there are," Katya said. "They're too fucking slow. One more time for the road?" She looked Alaska up and down. "You might earn those extra stars."

Alaska cheered up immediately.

Katya nearly came in her pants before they even started.


	2. 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: SHARON NEEDLES. Don't read this if you know it will upset you.

When Katya got booked for a couple nights in Rochester in January, and when she saw on the web that Alaska would be there for one of them, her dick paid attention.

Rochester was fun anyway, she told herself. It would be a good time even if Alaska wasn't into it.

Alaska was into it. She gave Katya an almost overbearing hug as soon as they met for rehearsal, gave her a kiss on the cheek, gave her a look that Katya was pretty sure meant, _I'll get naked for you later. You in?_

Katya gave the look right back. 

The most motherly queen Katya had ever met, who'd let both Katya and Alaska stay at her place on previous, separate trips, had offered them her spare bedroom.

"You make a cute couple," Mrs. Kasha Davis said, and Mr. Davis, helping her zip up her dress backstage, added, "They really do."

"Oh, we're not- " Alaska tried, and stopped.

"She's got a boyfriend," Katya said. "We just screw around sometimes."

"Well, that's fun, too," Kasha said. She might as well have said _Kids these days, right?_ even though she wasn't much older than Katya. "We don't care who sleeps where, and we won't hear a thing."

They did screw around in Kasha's spare room. But they did it very, very quietly, stuffing their mouths with one another's underwear. It was hard to laugh around that. It was also hard to say _shhh_ , but they managed.

They screwed around again in the morning, and then Katya stripped the bed and took the sheets downstairs. She slinked about, checking all the doors, until she found the washer and dryer in the mudroom off the kitchen. She even started the load. 

Alaska thought it was hilarious. "I only do that at my grandmother's house," she said, still grinning.

"You're a horrible houseguest and you've certainly never washed **my** sheets," Katya said.

"Next time." She crossed her fingers. "Promise."

Katya snorted, and that was when Kasha stumbled into the kitchen, in glasses and boxers and a vintage kimono that was exactly what they'd expect her to wear. She directed herself almost blindly to the coffeemaker, which she must have set up the night before. All she had to do was press _on_.

It was so domestic, Katya couldn't stand it. One shared glance told her Alaska felt the same. 

They said nothing, following Kasha's lead, until Kasha finished downing half a mug. 

"As long as you know you have to put the damn things back on the bed," she said finally. They could all hear the washing machine spinning in the next room. "I might be the housewife, but he does the laundry."

"That's so cute!" Alaska gushed. Katya held back a laugh.

"We're a model modern family," Kasha said, and got up to pour big mugs for them, too. She offered a splash of bourbon, when she added it to her own, and who were they to say no.

Alaska left for the long drive home after breakfast, and Katya, well trained by her mother, volunteered to clean up and load the dishwasher. Kasha sat at the table, smoking and watching. 

Katya knew she was being judged even without looking.

"You, my friend, have a big problem," Kasha said to Katya's back.

Katya didn't turn around. "Gurl, I've got all sorts of problems."

"If you're waiting for that one to break up with her boyfriend..." Kasha left that sentence hanging.

"I'm not."

"Honey, I hope that's true for your sake, but I don't believe it."

"You should, bitch," Katya said brightly, finally turning around to look. "I don't lie."

"Only to yourself, sweetheart," Kasha said.

Katya scoffed, and buried that conversation so far down in her brain that she wouldn't recollect it until Kasha reminded her years later, in very different circumstances.

xxx

It was a couple months before Alaska's name popped up in Katya's texts. Katya's eyebrows shot up, and her dick was not uninterested. 

The text had the name of a Boston club Katya had also performed at many times, and a date a couple weeks later, and the question, "Hookup?"

"Sure," Katya texted back, after ruminating on it for hours so she wouldn't look too eager.

All she got in response was a thumbs up.

But she told her manager she needed the night off, and didn't book any tricks, and went to the show alone, sitting at the bar. She chatted with the bartenders, who she knew from performing there herself, and then waved at a bouncer she also knew as she ducked backstage after Alaska's first number.

"Katya!" Alaska said. She grabbed both of Katya's hands and then pulled her into a hug. She was a lot more drunk than Katya was. "I didn't know you'd be at the show! I was going to walk to your house!"

Katya was pretty sure Alaska couldn't find the dressing room door, let alone make it through the little warren of streets that was her neighborhood. She said, "I am a woman of mystery. Are you done? Or do you have another set?"

"One more," Alaska said. "Help me change?"

So Katya did--Alaska needed help to avoid falling sideways--and re-glued a lash that had fallen across her eye, and said, "Mi crackhouse es tu crackhouse." It made Alaska laugh, without exaggeration, hysterically. 

When she finally met Katya at the bar, Alaska ordered another drink. Katya cancelled it. "I don't think you need any more tonight," she said. "And that's coming from me, so."

Both bartenders laughed at her, and they looked after Alaska while Katya went backstage again to collect Alaska's bag. Then she steered Alaska out of the club and over to Katya's apartment, a short but interminable walk away. Alaska was babbling about her boyfriend, who was out of town somewhere else, and how someday she was going to start wearing combat boots instead of heels because her feet were in agony, and about how fucking impossible it was to find your way anywhere in fucking Boston, and about her boyfriend, again.

Katya stopped and took off Alaska's shoes for her before she broke an ankle on the cobblestones.

When they'd made it safely to Katya's, she pushed Alaska up the stairs and poured her into her own bed, just in time for Alaska to pass out.

That was some hookup, she said to herself. But somehow she was more charmed than annoyed. She shook her head, disturbingly fondly, as she made sure Alaska was lying on her side. She put some water and a grubby old bowl next to her, and got herself ready for bed.

She awoke to the sound of puking coming, thankfully, from her bathroom, and lay still for a few minutes, wondering how bad of a host she'd be if she didn't get up and see if her guest was okay. Mrs. Kasha Davis would definitely get up to see if her guest was okay. 

The apartment went quiet while she was thinking, except for a few thoroughly unsexy moans that were not at all what she'd had in mind for tonight. She finally decided that if Alaska was going to die, Katya could at least walk her to the hospital a few blocks away.

"I'm sorry," was the first thing Alaska said. She was lying on the floor, still wearing duct tape on her head and sweat-ruined makeup, one hand on her forehead. 

"Been there myself," Katya said with a kind smile, and Alaska twisted up her face like she was going to cry. But she actually got to her knees and threw up in the toilet again.

Katya wet two washcloths, and sat on the edge of the tub to help Alaska lie back down. She put the cold washcloth on Alaska's forehead, and cleaned up her mouth and nose with the warm one. She turned it over, and started wiping away the makeup all over her face and neck.

Alaska moaned with what sounded like a blend of embarrassment, gratitude, and deepest misery. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I can maybe blow you in a few hours?"

"Wow, I don't know how I'm going to resist that offer," Katya said.

Alaska choked out a laugh. "Bitch," she said.

"Want me to help you to the bed?"

"Ugh, no, I need to stay here a while. You should go back to sleep."

Katya gave her a ratty old towel to lie on, because all of Katya's towels were ratty and old. She helped Alaska brush her teeth, helped her to get most of her costume off and some boxers and a tank top and one of Katya's sweatshirts on. She filled a cup with fresh water and ice cubes, and put it on the floor so Alaska could reach it. "You sure you'll be okay?" she asked. 

"I'll be fine eventually. Go to bed."

It didn't feel right to leave her there, but Alaska was a grownup, and Katya really did need some more sleep.

"Shout really loud if you need me," Katya said, and Alaska groaned.

Alaska never did come back to bed. She was gone when Katya woke up. She'd even scrubbed the sink and the toilet, which was especially nice considering that they'd been filthy to begin with. 

Katya got a text later that day. It said, "Sorry."

"Shut up, you said that already," Katya texted back. "But I'm cutting you off before the damn show next time."

xxx

But the next time, Alaska had Sharon Needles in tow.

Or rather, Sharon Needles had Alaska in tow.

Katya had watched Sharon's videos, too, and she loved Sharon's drag. Sharon was weird and smart and twisted and funny, and in person, even before the show, she sucked up all the attention in the room, like a black hole. 

Which was a great quality for a drag queen to have. Katya aspired to it herself. But maybe it was less great for Alaska.

Alaska should be the one sucking up all the attention, Katya thought. When Alaska performed by herself, she had a glow about her that sparkled in a 100-yard radius and lit up the back of the room. 

But the glow dimmed a bit with Sharon there. Sharon was always center stage, metaphorically, and Alaska was off somewhere indistinct, stage left. 

Still, Sharon looked at Alaska like she was the sexiest and tastiest thing she'd ever seen, and Alaska looked at Sharon like she'd hung the moon, and that by itself made Katya happy. She was happy for them, happy that they'd made a long-term relationship work, something Katya had never managed for herself and always marveled at. 

And it was just as impossible as ever not to be happy when Alaska smiled. 

Katya went upstairs to turn herself into a biological woman. When she returned, tatty blond wig and dollar-store blue eyeshadow and all, Sharon had at least her fourth drink in her hand, and she seemed to look at Katya with new eyes.

"Oh, I know you!" Sharon said. "You're the hot hooker who lives upstairs!"

"Fuck's sake, Aaron," Alaska said.

"Hey, facts are facts," Katya said, and walked away. The bar was already hopping on a Friday night. She spotted a couple of former tricks hanging out together, and got ready to either turn the flirting up to high, or watch their embarrassment when they found out she'd fucked both of them in the ass.

Before she got there, a hand locked around her arm. A hand with long, familiar fingers. 

"Stop," Alaska said. "I told her not to say anything, but when she drinks..." She didn't seem able to finish. She looked like a lost kitten.

Katya felt like a terrible person, for some reason. "It's fine," she said, and turned to walk away again.

"No," Alaska said, grabbing Katya's arm again. "It's just, it's one of our rules. We can fuck around but we have to tell each other. I don't want-"

"It's **fine** ," Katya said again. She hated that she was the one who felt bad. What the hell?

"I don't want you to be hurt," Alaska said a little desperately.

"You'd have to work a lot harder than that to hurt me, sorry." She stared at Alaska's hand on her arm, and Alaska let go.

By the time she went on stage, Katya was thoroughly toasted. She was slutty and full of self-deprecation that made all the bridesmaids laugh and tip her like crazy, even though it was in Russian and no one had any idea what she was saying. 

And afterwards she scored a trick wearing an expensive, perfectly tailored suit, so she'd get to eat for the rest of the week. That was always a plus. 

She saw Alaska look back at her sadly as she left the club with Sharon, but Katya didn't care.

xxx

Katya was showered and dressed in what passed for her pajamas, with the negligee she'd worn at the trick's request drying over the tub, when the doorbell rang.

She didn't want to go down to answer it. But hey, maybe the trick wanted a second round and would pay even more this time. Or maybe he brought a friend.

It wasn't a trick.

It was Alaska fucking Thunderfuck.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Katya said.

"I'm sorry," Alaska said with a whine and a sniffle. Her eyes were puffy. "We had a fight, and I walked out without my wallet or my phone, and you're the only person in Boston whose address I know." She looked plaintively at Katya and said again, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, okay," Katya said. "But if you want to make use of my professional skills tonight, you're paying through the nose."

Alaska chuckled meekly and followed Katya upstairs. "Oh, God," she said near the top. "I should've asked if you were alone."

"He left half an hour ago." 

"Good trade?"

"Good trick." 

"Even better," Alaska said. "I tried it a few times and I sucked at it."

"Uh-huh," Katya said. She closed the door and sat Alaska down on the couch. "So does this happen a lot, you and your boyfriend?"

Alaska shrugged in a way Katya read as _I don't want to admit this, but yes._ "I love him so much, it's just--our egos are too big for each other sometimes, you know?" And Katya read that as _Her ego runs over mine like a roller truck on wet tarmac._

Katya didn't know, but she pretended to. She couldn't imagine loving anyone enough to put up with their shit long-term, and every person on the planet had a whole lot of shit. "Hmm," she said, stalling. "Want to use my phone?"

"I," Alaska said, looking like a lost kitten again. "I mean ..."

Katya shook her head, and her spidey-senses tingled. But the thing was, she was pretty sure Alaska did it subconsciously, that look. Alaska had no idea how easily she could manipulate anybody. 

Or maybe, for _anybody_ , read _Katya_.

_("Not just you," Sharon will say, years in the future. "She's a little witch, casts a spell over everyone and doesn't even know she's doing it. It's infuriating and sexy as fuck," and Katya will agree.)_

"I didn't say I was kicking you out," Katya said, kicking herself for being a sucker. "I just asked if you want to use my phone. So she knows you're not dead."

"She knows I'm not dead," Alaska said. "Later, maybe. I'm still pissed."

Katya prepared herself for a long night, and offered Alaska a drink to get a minute to herself. "Diet Coke or tap water," she said. "I'm cutting us both off this time."

"Coke would be great, thank you," Alaska said. "I'm really sorry."

"You said that already," Katya called from the kitchen.

"No, about before. I'm sorry she said that. I don't want you to think you're just some guy I tell stories about."

"What you say to each other is none of my business," Katya said as she returned. "Forget about it. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter!" Alaska insisted.

"Why?" Why on earth would Alaska care? 

"Why? Because--because you're a human person and you have feelings even though you pretend not to and it matters!"

"Okay," Katya said mildly. "Here." She held out the glass.

"And you--you're a **good** human person despite your protestations to the contrary, and you don't deserve to be a fucking punchline."

"I didn't know I was," Katya said. She desperately wanted to yank the conversation away from herself. "Is that what you fought about?"

"No, we--never mind." 

And even talking about an argument, Alaska looked like she thought Sharon was absolute perfection. Like she'd been booted out of heaven for the night.

Katya sighed. "No, you can tell me," she said. 

Making a face that was a combination of guilt and disgust, Alaska admitted, "She got on fucking Drag Race. She leaves in a week."

"Hey, that's great!" Katya refused to feel jealous. "Congratulations!"

Alaska squeezed her eyes shut for a second. "It was her first audition."

"Oh." Now Katya did allow herself to feel jealous. "How many are you up to?"

"Four." 

"Two. I'm sorry. That does kind of suck."

"I'm supposed to be a grown-up, right? I'm supposed to be happy for her. But it's fucking killing me."

"Yeah, I get that."

"We made our fucking videos together. We had interviews together! And then she got the Skype call, and I didn't, and it **does** suck. They told me on the fucking phone." There was a bit of a whine in her voice, but Katya couldn't blame her this time. "We're always on a really short fuse, but lately..."

"Yeah," Katya said again. She didn't want to be on the show as desperately as she knew Alaska did, but it still hurt, a bit. It hurt every time somebody she knew got chosen over her. "You know what, though? You'll be on the next season, and you'll win, and then she'll be jealous of you."

"Your hips to God's lips, gurl. That would be **amazing**." She gave Katya a watery kind of smirk. "I told you you were a good person."

"I'm not. You just have low standards."

"Was that a read?"

"Of me, not you. Anyway."

"Anyway, she's walking around a nervous wreck, she's convinced they'll send her home halfway through the first episode. And I'm walking around a green-eyed little bitch when I should be happy for her! I'm a terrible, terrible person."

"Can't argue with that."

Alaska choked on a laugh.

"You'll miss her, though?" Katya said.

"It's going to be **awful**."

Katya refused to think the word _codependent_ , and she wrenched an idea out of her ass. "Can I see your audition tapes? Are they as humiliating as mine?" 

"More," Alaska said with a crooked smile. "I'm sure of it."

"Five bucks says mine are worse," Katya said, holding out her hand. Alaska shook it.

"Done," Alaska said. "Wait. Who's the judge?" 

"Tiebreaker is the both of us lose and have to hand over a five. Twice."

"I cannot believe I am agreeing to this absolute sham of a contest."

"I've agreed to a lot worse," Katya said, looking Alaska up and down.

"Fuck off," Alaska said happily, and got her phone out.

They sat on the couch, heads and knees close together, and squinted at the little screens and low resolution and finally resorted to Katya's laptop despite the buffering, and elbowed and mocked and read one another.

"Still even," Katya declared after they'd watched both of hers, and two of Alaska's.

"Just wait," Alaska said as she found what she clearly considered to be the winning entry. 

Katya watched in wide-mouthed horror. It was the second year Alaska had auditioned, and it was a beautiful and endearing disaster, and Katya couldn't even laugh, she was so impressed. "Oh, no, I give," she said. "You win. That was **way** worse. No wonder they didn't take you."

Alaska slapped her on the arm.

"You really worked for those five bucks," Katya said. "You didn't have to work **that** hard. I'd've tipped you anyway."

"I'm a perfectionist," Alaska said.

Katya laughed like a maniac, and they watched every video all over again.

"This is kind of a weird thing to bond over," Alaska said.

"Whatever," Katya said. "All my friends are weird. You fit right in." 

Alaska looked at her strangely. Katya didn't ask. 

"How'd **you** get so weird?" Alaska said.

"Oh, it's a long, painful story involving perfect parenting and Catholic school and an ideal but ideally boring childhood in the suburbs," Katya said. "You?"

"The usual story. Not being allowed to play with Barbie dolls."

"That'll do it. Every time."

"I spent every day holed up in my bedroom, drawing depressing bullshit and hideous fashion and counting down the hours until I could move away."

"Me too!"

"The drawing, or the counting?"

"Both! Suburbia is a horrible thing to inflict on a child."

"Mine wasn't even a suburb," Alaska said. "It was just boring as fuck."

"Goth?" Katya asked.

"Emo. Same shit, different decade."

"No, I'm just out of touch with the youths and their culture."

"I don't believe that!"

"No, really!" Katya exclaimed. "I didn't want anybody to clock me as a fag, so I went straight for weird and hid under a costume."

"I hid in fucking corners trying to be invisible," Alaska said.

"I can't believe you were ever invisible," Katya teased. She meant it, though. That glow. Did little Alaska not have that glow?

"I was so shy, you have no idea."

"I bet I could beat you on that. Let's call up our moms and ask."

Alaska laughed hysterically, like she did when she was drunk, and Katya laughed with her.

"I'm still shy!" Katya said. "Why do you think I have to be drunk off my ass to get on stage?"

Frowning, Alaska looked away, and Katya decided she was getting nowhere near **that** conversation.

"You know what?" Katya said. "When I'm rich and famous, I'm going to start like an X-men academy for the little fags and the little dykes and the little trans. The motto will be, 'Love yourselves, love everyone, love a thousand people if you want, but for the love of God, don't tell me about it because you're minors, and I do not want to know that shit.'" She thought for a second. "Also there will be lasers. I'm not sure how yet, but I'll fit it in the curriculum somewhere." 

Alaska had been giggling, punchy and innocent and, yes, girly, since about three words into Katya's proposal. When she finally got her breath back, she looked at Katya with wide, solemn eyes, and said, "Can I be your first investor?" Then she started giggling again.

"Yes," Katya said. "The opening stock price is five dollars, strangely enough."

Alaska fished it out of her jeans and handed it over.

"Victory is mine!" Katya said.

Then they were off, comparing notes and stories from the childhoods they'd worked so hard to get away from but were pretty damn good in hindsight, talking about queens they admired, rating every Drag Race contestant from all three seasons, cackling and teasing and reading one another. Proving, to Katya's glee or dismay, she hadn't decided which yet, that they had a lot more in common than fucking.

"Fuck," Alaska said finally. By now they were lying on the floor next to one another. "If I were Catholic and you were taller, we'd be the same person!" She giggled again, definitely punchy, and yawned. 

"Yeah, I think you-"

"Hey, you should come perform in Pittsburgh sometime. They'd love you."

Katya didn't say, _Your boyfriend's in Pittsburgh_ , though she did sense the moment Alaska put it together. What Katya said instead was what she'd been trying to say in the first place. "I think you need some sleep, gurl."

"Yeah," Alaska said, "Any second now."

Katya went around gathering up trash and turning off lights, and started to get herself ready for bed. 

"Hey," Alaska said from the living room. "I still think," and the last word faded off into a yawn. "I still think you're really cute."

"Fuck," Katya said to her empty bedroom, after she closed the door. "You couldn't have said that on a night your ass was open for business?"

xxx

Alaska woke up the next morning just where she'd passed out, on the floor. Floors were not comfortable with her lack of body fat and bones jutting out everywhere. But there was a pillow under her head and a blanket over her body, and neither of them had been there the night before.

On the rickety coffee table she was sure came from either Goodwill or the dump, she found an orange, a pop tart, and a note.

"Gone to the STD clinic," the note said. "Text me so I know you're not dead."

Alaska ate the pop tart, took a quick shower, and pocketed the orange.

When she got back to their crappy, overpriced room (Katya had announced that four of the 9/11 hijackers had stayed there the night before, and that the hotel should charge extra) Sharon was calmly eating breakfast, but Alaska could tell she wasn't as calm as she seemed.

"Glad you're alive," Sharon said. "Ordered you some granola and yogurt. Nothing hot because I didn't know when you'd be back," and that was where Alaska heard the anxiety in her voice. It sounded a lot like anger.

It wasn't like Sharon had never walked out. But Alaska just kissed her on the cheek and said, "Thank you."

They ate silently for a few minutes, until Sharon sniffed and looked up.

"You're clean," she said. "You stank of booze last night."

"So did you," Alaska tried to tease.

"So you weren't out walking the streets until dawn." Sharon held up one finger. "And you didn't have a way to pay for a hotel." Another finger, while Alaska sighed and rolled her eyes. "And," Sharon held up up one more finger and looked very proud of herself, "nothing in this fucking town is open 24 hours." She thought about it and asked in one of her raunchiest stage voices, "So where'd you go? The hooker?"

"I slept on her floor."

"Guilty as charged!" Sharon crowed. 

"She listened to me rant, that's all. It wasn't a hookup. Also, you're an asshole."

"So are you, but somehow we love each other."

Alaska smiled crookedly and kissed her, and they were back to normal, and they made time for a quick round of make-up sex.

Later, when Sharon went off to the shower, Alaska found her phone and typed, "Not dead but grateful." After a few seconds, she added, "You're a good friend." 

"I am the kind of friend who'll steal all your valuables and charge you for storage," Katya texted back. Then, in a long series, one sentence chasing another while Alaska tried to pack, Katya wrote, "Did I tell you about the time I stole all of my brother's comic books and sold them on the street the way normal kids sell lemonade? Then he beat me up and got in so much trouble, I got to keep the proceeds? Which was all of $7.50, because I charged 50 cents each, and he's never forgiven me for the 50 cents. And I don't remember what I spent it on because I was like eight, but it was probably drugs. And I actually liked my brother, I just wanted some disposable income. So you'd better watch out, hunty."

By that time, Sharon was out of the shower and reading over Alaska's shoulder. "She's nuts," Sharon said. "I like her." She winked at Alaska. "When we break up and you're in the market for another sick and twisted crossdresser, she should be on the list." 

"Ugh," Alaska said, shoving Sharon away with one hand. "There's no list. Hurry up. You're paying if we miss checkout time." 

To Katya she typed, "That escalated quickly and I don't believe a word of it," and Katya texted, "I will get you a signed deposition from my mother," and then it was time to go. Alaska put her phone away.

xxx

Missing Sharon was torture. On stage, at home, drinking by herself or snorting with friends, Alaska's mind was on a soundstage somewhere undicslosed, in Los Angeles. 

Who knew what Sharon was doing? Who knew if she was a miserable, drunken wreck or had already charmed the pants off RuPaul? Who knew if she was having the time of her life, or pissing the other queens off so much they'd conspired to kill her? 

Alaska knew a bit about filming, because word got around. She knew they filmed each episode in a couple days. She knew there was a ton of stress and no time to breathe. She knew there was a lot of rush-rush-rush followed by an off day of mind-numbing boredom. 

Sharon didn't like to be bored. 

Who knew if the girls were still able to leave the hotel, or if the producers had gotten better at locking them down? Who knew what Sharon was doing, who she was meeting, what she was taking?

Her mother told her not to worry, that worry equaled stress, that she should relax and enjoy the time on her own, because if they ever got married, there'd be a lot less of it. 

Alaska avoided discussing Sharon with her mother after that.

Her friends, **their** friends, teased her over her freakouts. Alaska took it with a laugh and a fond fuck you, teased right back, and stopped talking about it unless somebody else brought it up.

But she had this hookup in Boston, a generous and batshit crazy and strangely kind human person, who'd seen Alaska at her worst and witnessed the aftermath of Alaska-and-Sharon at their worst, but for some reason hadn't yet blocked Alaska's number or told her to fuck off.

"My mother's driving me nuts," Alaska told Katya one day, early on. "She keeps trying to talk me into being **reasonable** and that is the last thing I need. And I **love** my mother."

"You've come to the right place for completely unreasonable conversation here!" Katya said. "I accidentally double-booked last Wednesday, but they were so drunk they got into it."

"Double the price?" Alaska asked, amused and appreciating Katya's effort to distract her.

"Double the price, **and** one of them forgot he paid me, and paid me again."

"Triple the price!"

"I am an honest woman," Katya went on, "and I'd usually give him a refund, but he puked in my fucking bed and I needed the cash to buy new sheets."

"Proper guests," Alaska said, "at least puke in the toilet."

"Proper, coke-addled guests even clean it afterwards."

And that cheered Alaska up enough to get through the next day, or at least until her next Sharon crisis.

xxx

Katya didn't know why, or when, she'd become Alaska's confessor for all things Sharon. She figured Alaska just needed an outsider to talk to. And Katya needed pretty much anyone to talk to, all the time. 

On the phone, Alaska seemed to cycle through resentment, loneliness, adoration, and bright or bitter happiness for Sharon, depending on the day. Or hour. Or minute.

"They called and asked me to make a fucking video! With 20 minutes notice!" Alaska said. "An I-love-you-so-much-I-miss-you-video!"

"You **do** love her and miss her," Katya said.

"Twenty minutes!"

"Did you do it?"

"Of course I did, but I bitched a lot about not getting on the show this season before I said yes."

"I'm happy to see you're successfully working your way through all the negativity," Katya said.

AND

"I don't even want to go to Pride," Alaska said. "We go every year and it's not the same."

"We have a float every year," Katya said. "All of us queens out daywalking and scaring the children and trying to keep our clothes on." She thought about that. "You don't have that problem."

"Daywalking?" Alaska actually sounded amused. "Scaring the children?"

"No, those are definitely problems you have. You just don't have a problem with taking your clothes off. Speaking of," Katya said. She wanted to make Alaska laugh. "A trick tried to steal my fucking phone last week. It says Tracfone right on it, why would anybody bother?"

"What does this have to do with me taking my clothes off?" Now Alaska sounded more amused, and Katya was gratified.

"I'm getting to that! So I chased him down the street in a wig, panties, and full makeup, and finally he dropped the phone on the ground just so nobody would know the degenerate naked drag queen was chasing **him**."

Laughing, Alaska said, "It disturbs me that I can picture this."

"I live to disturb," Katya said. And to cheer up Alaska fucking Thunderfuck, apparently.

AND

"Do you think she can win?" Alaska asked. "Sometimes I think she might actually win."

"She does have that sparkling personality," Katya said.

"She really does," Alaska said, missing Katya's sarcasm entirely.

AND

"Even the cat fucking misses her," Alaska said. "She keeps pissing in Sharon's shoes."

"You could keep the cat out of the closet," Katya said.

"It's not my fault if Sharon left her shoes all over the house."

"See?" Katya said. "That's perfectly reasonable."

AND

"So it's 96 fucking degrees out, right?" Alaska said.

Katya said, "Right," though in Boston it was only 92.

"And the AC goes out at work. And customers keep complaining and you know you can't just say, 'You think **you're** miserable?'"

"Not if you intend to keep the job, no."

"So instead I got so mad I kicked the ice machine and I think I broke a toe."

"Please don't damage your feet unless they're in heels," Katya said. "You have a career to think about."

"Normally I'd just call Sharon on my break, and I'd vent, and she'd make me laugh." 

Katya considered her response. "I've heard some of the girls take burner phones to LA," she said.

"We were going to take burner phones!" Alaska whined. "So we could have phone sex from our rooms. It just felt like cheating if one of us wasn't there."

"You can take one next year," Katya said. "Just know you're likely to end up out on the street without any clothes on when somebody tries to steal it."

AND

"I called in sick again," Alaska said. "I couldn't get out of bed."

"Honey, I am strung out on meth daily, and even I don't miss work."

"I know! Because you are the world's highest-functioning addict, and I'm a lump of garbage hiding under the covers."

"Okay, look, if you don't make rent money you won't have a bed to hide in."

"I suppose," Alaska said resentfully, "Sharon needs a home to come back to."

"Or that," Katya sighed.

AND

"You know the longer she's gone, the more likely it is that she'll win," Katya said. "Right?"

"I want her to win so much," Alaska said. "But I think my head might explode from envy if she does."

"Speaking of exploding."

"Oh, God." Alaska knew what was coming. Katya was happy to hear her laugh even before the story started.

"I'm pretty sure this guy is trying to set up a session from like eight different addresses," Katya told her, "but he's creepy in all of them, so."

"How do you know it's the same guy?" Alaska asked with a big smile in her voice.

"He spells the same word wrong every time. He wants to bury his cock in my anise, and I just don't think that would end well."

AND

"I don't know what to do with myself on stage anymore," Alaska said. "When Sharon's not at least in the building."

"You do just fine here without Sharon. And in every bar I've ever seen you grace." In Katya's opinion Alaska did better on stage without Sharon than with her, but that would be a hard sell with this audience.

"No, but **here**." She sounded particularly lonely today. "I went to college here, I have friends here from before Sharon. But everything now is so tied up with her."

Yeah, Katya thought, Sharon Needles could do that to a person.

"It's just. Sometimes I think I should just move back to LA and not be here when she gets home."

Katya sensed that this conversation required more finesse than the others. God help her, **she** was going to have to be reasonable. "You don't mean that," she said. 

"No, I mean it. But I won't do it. I'd miss the cat."

AND

Katya didn't want to worry about Alaska fucking Thunderfuck. She had better shit to do with her life.

But she did worry, every time Alaska said, "It'll all be better when she gets back. I know it will." And Alaska said it again and again.

xxx

Maybe Katya **was** a good friend. She had a lot of friends, really. She was good at collecting friends. She just never meant for Alaska to be one of them. 

Or maybe all those years of required confessionals in Catholic school were finally paying off.

At the very least, Katya thought, she was a good listener and a dependable source of both witty and absurd comebacks.

She was such a good listener, in fact, that Alaska **fucking** Thunderfuck showed up on her doorstep.

She just walked into the club one night, in boy clothes and artfully messy boy hair and tasteful boy eyeliner, and sat at the bar. Katya was dragged up and talking to a potential trick, but Alaska grabbed her attention, because of course she did. By sitting there. Ordering a drink, and blanking out every other person in the room from Katya's vision.

"Try me again sometime," Katya told the guy. 

"What, you got a better option?" he asked. He was too drunk to remember her, anyway.

"Something like that," she said. She slid over to Alaska, who watched her the whole way. "Well hello. What are you doing here, young man?"

"Oh, I was just in the neighborhood," Alaska said. 

"Weren't you in New York?"

Alaska shrugged. "It's not far. So, are you free after the show?"

"For your ass? Absolutely."

xxx

Alaska waited, and cheered, and tipped Katya generously, in amounts Katya knew she couldn't afford. Katya didn't like it. At least Alaska tipped the other girls, too.

"Don't pay me," Katya told her. "It makes me feel like a whore. And if you say I **am** a whore, I won't fuck you."

"Then give me back my money," Alaska said.

Later, after they'd had a round of sex and shared a joint, they sat naked on Katya's hand-me-down couch, watching reruns of some sitcom Katya barely remembered from childhood, but Alaska knew every word of.

Katya eyed Alaska sideways during a commercial and asked, "You want to tell me why you're here now?"

Alaska didn't look at her. "Oh, I'm doing a circuit. All my old hookups in a week."

Katya didn't believe her. "Are you going to stick with that story? Remember you've been talking to me on the phone."

Sighing, Alaska seemed to shrink a bit. "I know. I'm just. I'm a mess. You know I'm a mess. And you make me feel, I don't know, a little less messy."

Katya gestured around her apartment. "I don't know how that's possible." Then she forced herself to wait for Alaska's answer.

"I feel like everybody else thinks I'm a fuckup," Alaska said at last.

"Well..."

"But you still talk to me like a person. Like I can do better."

"I make everyone feel like a better person, because everyone **is** a better person than me."

Alaska finally turned to look at her. Stared, actually. "Why do you do that? Put yourself down like that."

"It's called comedy," Katya said, but it made her uncomfortable. She'd been called out. 

"You're not on stage."

"Oh, I'm always on stage, hunty."

The stare got deeper, and Katya could see herself being worked over by the cogs in Alaska's overly efficient brain.

"You're not a bad person," Alaska said. "You're kind, you care about people-"

"Lies!" Katya said. "Villainous, malicious-"

"Hey," Alaska asked softly. "Can I suck you off?"

Katya jumped on the change of subject. "I have never said no to those words in my entire life. Reciprocal? Otherwise known as 69?"

"No. Just you." Alaska slid down to her knees, on the floor. She didn't have to pull off Katya's pants, because Katya wasn't wearing any. 

It was, well. It was fucking amazing and it felt like they were making full eye contact for the first time, though it was far from the first time. Alaska was staring up at her from under those long lashes, her swollen pink lips around Katya's purple dick, her tongue darting out for a long, slow lick, and Katya finally had to look elsewhere. 

When she looked back, Alaska had her eyes closed, but she looked--she looked **peaceful**. She looked like she'd never tasted anything sweeter in her life. She looked fucking angelic, the filthy little cunt, and it was that look that made Katya come down her throat.

Alaska climbed back on the couch and laid her head on Katya's lap, and fuck. **Fuck.**

Katya needed not to care. It shouldn't have mattered what the hell Alaska looked like. She was just a fucking hookup.

"I'd love to return **that** favor," Katya said, when she got her wits back together and was pretty sure she wouldn't embarrass herself.

"No, it's." Alaska shook her head on Katya's thigh. "No. I feel like I take a lot more than I give back, you know?"

Katya said nothing, because it was probably true.

"And I'm a really selfish person, but I'm really grateful."

"You didn't have to suck my dick to tell me that."

"But I wanted to." She rolled onto her back, so she could see Katya's face. "How long until you're ready for another installment?"

"You little slut," Katya said, laughing loudly and thinking that if Sharon Needles wasn't giving this creature with the doe eyes and the Bambi legs and virtually zero muscle tone everything she'd ever wanted or needed or begged for, then Sharon Needles was a fucking idiot.

"I really am going to give you back your money," Katya said. "As soon as I find my pants."

Alaska cackled and went down, again.

But Katya did hand over the cash before Alaska left at daybreak, and a few days later, Alaska texted that Sharon was on her way home. 

Katya didn't hear from her for months after that, and she wasn't surprised. She knew now where all the bodies were buried, and Alaska probably wanted to forget.

xxx

The first thing Sharon said at the airport, before they even hugged one another, was, "Are you okay?"

"I am now," Alaska said. Everything would be better with Sharon home. Alaska's world was back on its axis. The past month and a half of drinking alone and crying every night were going to fade into the background. "I missed you so fucking much."

"I missed you, too," Sharon said. She pulled Alaska into her arms and Alaska felt her shaking.

"Are **you** okay?" Alaska asked.

"Nerves still eating at me. I'll get over it."

Alaska took a breath. "I'm proud of you," she said. Because she wanted to be, because she **should** have been.

Sharon pulled back to look her in the eye, and probably saw the truth. "I need a drink," she announced.

It was loud enough for their gathered friends to hear, and then there was a rush of bodies and a riot of _Congratulations_ and _Welcome home_ and _Tell us everything_.

Alaska clung to Sharon with tears in her eyes, letting all the other voices take over.

When they got home, after getting all of Sharon's bags inside, they fell onto the couch with a bottle of whiskey. Alaska laughed too loudly at Sharon's stories from the set, even though she wasn't sure she wanted to laugh at all.

"Fuck me," Alaska said, interrupting a retelling of- She didn't even know what Sharon had been saying. "Fuck me so hard it hurts."

Sharon scoffed and poured another shot. "You don't want that."

"I do," Alaska said. "I want bruises and I want to feel it tomorrow." She wanted to be branded inside. She wanted to fill up the hollow in her stomach that was supposed to go away when Sharon got home but still felt like it was falling down, down, down.

It wasn't like they'd never gotten rough during sex. They'd always enjoyed it, too. But Sharon wanted something different. Sharon wanted sweet and soft and _I love you_ while Alaska was still straining for more. And that empty part inside her just kept falling.

xxx

"Fuck," Alaska finally finally managed to text, around Halloween. "I'm the bad friend, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," Katya texted back right away.

Alaska felt like she'd spent a lot of time apologizing to Katya, too much time, but she did it again, anyway. "Sorry."

"Apology unnecessary but accepted. What's up?"

What's up, Alaska asked herself. She honestly hadn't intended to use Katya as her unpaid psychotherapist anymore. She'd just wanted to say hi, but apparently she wasn't capable of that.

"You first," she texted instead.

"Oh, well, one of the girls got evicted and she's sleeping on my couch," Katya typed, "but she brought her own earplugs. Because she knows."

"Business in the bedroom only," Alaska replied with a smile. "A wise choice."

"Yes. But tricks walk in and see two of us and either they think they're getting **really** lucky, or they get all flustered and leave."

Alaska laughed as she saw where this was going. "They only want one prostitute to know they're gay?"

"Exactly. I'm going to have to require a down payment for future transactions. No refunds for fragile masculinity."

"Your life is something else," Alaska typed with honest admiration.

"Yes, but you still talk to me. What's up?"

"Nothing," Alaska wrote quickly, because she suddenly wanted to cry. "I'm fine. Catch you later?"

"Sure," Katya typed a bit later, obviously having decided not to ask. 

Alaska felt like an idiot.

xxx

Alaska's next text, just after Thanksgiving, took Katya by surprise. She'd been a little distracted. It was possible she'd forgotten Alaska existed, but Katya could never be sure, with her brain. 

The text said, "Coming to your humble abode 12/16. You up for it?"

And apparently Katya was also really behind on the local drag news, because she hadn't even noticed Alaska on the schedule. She thought for a good hour before replying, "Yes, but I have a warning."

"Chlamydia again?"

Alaska must be feeling better, Katya thought. That was an actual joke. "Not chlamydia," Katya typed. "Boyfriend! I have!" 

"You have a boyfriend?" Alaska texted back right away.

"Don't sound so shocked."

"I'm typing, I don't sound anything. And I don't mind if he doesn't."

This was the part Katya had spent an hour writing in her head, before she replied to the first text. "Okay. That's the warning. I'm sorry to have to tell you that my penis will be unavailable for your delectation." 

There was a bit of a wait until Katya's phone dinged again. The text said, "Giving the monogamy thing a go?"

"Worth a shot," Katya typed. "You can still stay at my place. We'll probably be at his, anyway."

"Sure. Thanks. So what's he like?"

"Great ass. Dark hair. More fiscally responsible than I am. And his apartment doesn't look like it should be condemned."

"Exactly what I always look for in a guy. Lack of cockroaches."

"You joke, but you don't live above a dive bar."

"I've never seen roaches in your place," Alaska wrote.

"They're shy, and you're usually drunk."

"Hey, Katya?"

Katya waited a bit and then typed, "Yes?"

"I'm really happy for you."

And there it was. She suddenly remembered that Alaska was an actual nice person, which was somewhat unfortunate.

But all she typed was, "Thanks."

xxx

Having a boyfriend was weird, and it was a bit of a mystery, to Katya, how she'd ended up with one. She knew where it had started. She just felt like she'd missed a few intervening steps.

They'd met on an Indian summer day at Dunkin' Donuts, waiting in a long line for the one thing she knew would make her hangover bearable. In her head, she was jumping from foot to foot. In reality, she managed to keep it down to a few obnoxious sighs and some foot tapping.

He was standing behind her, also hungover. He noticed her first. She noticed him noticing.

"Why is it always like this here on Saturdays?" he asked conspiratoratorially, like they already knew one another.

"Desperation," Katya said.

"Everyone's desperate, or just us?"

"Probably everyone," she said. "But mostly us."

He smirked at her, looking her up and down. "Just how desperate are you?"

She smirked back. "Define desperate in this context."

His smirk turned into a hungry, possibly even desperate grin.

In the next line over, an older man stared at them. He wore a suit he'd paid a lot of money for but hadn't bothered to have tailored, and he was obviously in from the suburbs for a matinee of one of the touring Broadway shows. He stared, and then his eyebrows went up, and he frowned.

"Oh, grow up, Richard," the man's wife said. 

Katya decided the wife could stay.

The boyfriend-to-be leaned in and asked in Katya's ear, "Should we tell them what kind of neighborhood they've found themselves in?"

"Be kind to the zoo patrons," Katya said, also leaning in, "or they'll take gay marriage away again."

He laughed in a way she liked, deep and sudden and genuine. She paid for his coffee. He took even more sugar than she did.

His apartment, like hers, was a few minutes' walk away, but she was sure his was cleaner. They went back there and fucked, ignoring the complaints from his also hungover roommate, who kept opening the bedroom door to tell them to shut up.

Katya also liked the way the way the future boyfriend laughed while telling his roommate to fuck off and get some damn earplugs.

"What's your name?" Katya asked afterwards.

He smirked again. "Richard." 

"You're kidding."

"I wish I were."

They were still naked in bed, and she held out a hand to shake. "Hi, Richard," she said. "I'm Brian."

xxx

He was tall. Katya liked tall. He was a little chubby, and Katya liked that, too. He was strong, though, strong enough to lift her easily. He was a waiter at a restaurant so classy that Katya would have been kicked out in less than a second, and he liked it, speaking ruefully of his "goddamn useless English degree from BU." (She sympathized. She had a goddamn useless art degree.) He liked Kafka, and Sartre, and a lot of other pretentious shit she also liked. He'd read fucking Dostoevsky. He hated Dostoevsky, but Katya was already sold.

He looked vaguely Asian and vaguely Hispanic, which Katya wasn't going to ask about until he volunteered the information himself, and the day they met, he had a lot of stubble to match her own.

She stayed in his bed for most of the afternoon.

She told him what she did for a living, and he wasn't disgusted **or** turned on, which were the two most common reactions she got. He came to her early show that night, but didn't stay for the late one.

Within a week they were dating. Within two weeks they were talking or texting several times a day, every day. Within three weeks they agreed to be exclusive, outside of Katya's second job, of course. It was a rollercoaster, but Katya loved rollercoasters. She didn't know whether they'd make it to New Year's, or even to next weekend. But it was fun, for a while.

xxx

Katya's boyfriend seemed like a nice enough guy. He was cute, too, though not at all Alaska's type. 

He wasn't a creep, he wasn't fucking her because he thought drag was kinky. He didn't seem to care about the crossdressing one way or another, and he really seemed to care about Katya. The problem, from Alaska's point of view, not that it was any of her business, was that he couldn't fully keep up with Katya, whose lightning-quick brain spewed out thoughts like steam from a kettle. He didn't get half of her jokes, and she didn't seem to notice. That wasn't new; Alaska had often seen Katya move on too quickly for anyone to follow. Nobody amused Katya more than Katya amused herself, and Alaska liked that in a person. But the boyfriend just joined in with nervous laughter.

He was boring. Some people liked boring. Alaska had never thought Katya was one of them.

She watched Katya flirting with him, giving him the smile she often wore in clubs, but Alaska was pretty sure it was just as fake now. It wasn't so much _I like you_ as _I like that you like me_.

Maybe Alaska didn't know what the hell she was talking about. It wasn't like she'd ever seen Katya in love.

He came backstage between numbers to bring Katya a drink, and found both her and Alaska in the cooler where Katya illegally took her smoke breaks. He chatted with them, and asked Alaska the appropriate and appropriately raunchy questions gay men asked each other when they first met. 

But when they left for the dressing room and he left to go back out front, Alaska was sure she saw a tiny echo of distaste on his face, as soon as Katya turned away. Maybe she imagined it.

Towards the end of the night, still backstage, Katya confided, "He wants me to quit the drugs." 

"We told you to quit him, gurl!" one of Katya's friends shouted. 

Katya told her fondly to fuck off.

"He wants you sober?" Alaska asked. "He just bought you a drink!"

"Not sober, just the hard stuff." She shrugged. "I can see his point."

Alaska panicked a bit inside at the thought of someone taking away all the substances she and Sharon kept in the house, and she wondered why people who knew Katya better wanted her to break up with him. Was it just the drugs? 

She didn't know how to say all that, so she asked, "Are you going to do it?"

Katya shrugged again. "I'm going to try. I think he's worth it." 

Alaska wasn't so sure. Whether Katya could do it, or whether he was worth it.

One of Katya's friends held up a pretend phone and mouthed to Alaska, _Call me_.

Alaska knew she wouldn't call. It wasn't her business.

"We have to stay upstairs, by the way," Katya said. "His roommate locked him out or something. Sorry, you'll have to take the couch."

"Yeah, no problem," Alaska said.

xxx

Katya found some clean sheets and a questionable pillow for Alaska, asked her if she needed anything, and whispered, "If the bed's a-rockin' don't come knockin'."

"You're hilarious," Alaska said dryly. "Don't worry about me. Have fun."

The boyfriend was already half undressed in the bedroom, sitting with his legs crossed on top of the covers.

"Okay," he told Katya, as soon as she closed the door and they were alone. "Aren't drag queens supposed to at least dress like women?"

Katya pulled her spangled top over her head and asked, once she could see him again, "Was that a read?"

He laughed. "No, your friend."

"What? She had a skirt on."

"She had a strip of fabric around her hips."

"Exactly. Skirt." She yanked down her tights and peeled off the sweaty thong she used for tucking. "Fuck, I need a shower."

"Not for my benefit, you don't. I could see his balls when he bent over on stage."

"She. What, you're afraid of balls now? Because I've got a pair right here that you've shown some fondness for in the past." She danced a little, to make them swing.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Of course I do. I just think you're missing the point. The female illusion isn't the goal, it's the vehicle."

"Vehicle for what?"

"For whatever your editorial point of view is. I went to art school, you know."

"And I didn't. So what's Alaska's editorial point of view?"

Katya shrugged. She was surprised he needed her to explain. "Gender is fluid and possibly pointless and whatever your expectations are, she's going to subvert them."

"By being not quite anywhere on the gender spectrum?"

"By being **herself**. All the time. She doesn't try to hide anything. That's what makes her so amazing." 

"You don't hide on stage, either."

"Oh, yes, I do. I desperately hide the fact that I have a penis. I hide it so well, I'm not sure you've noticed it yet, but I'd be happy to show you."

"No shower?"

"Fuck the shower, I want to fuck you instead."

xxx

Alaska heard Katya's laugh coming from the other room and smiled. It was impossible not to smile when Katya laughed. And Katya always seemed so alone, even around her friends; maybe the relationship **was** a good one, maybe it would be good for her. Katya deserved to have someone love her. 

If she could give up the drugs.

If he could keep her attention. 

If a breakup didn't send Katya straight to the psych ward.

And if only Alaska could stop picturing what might be going on behind that door, and go the fuck to sleep. What Katya did in her own damn bed was Katya's business.

After tossing and turning and covering her head with a pillow, Alaska heard the door open and the shower start. That would be Katya, taking off her makeup. It sounded like she was alone, but Alaska couldn't tell. 

When the bedroom door closed again, Alaska got up, went to the bathroom, and jerked off hard and fast in the steam from Katya's shower. It didn't stop her wondering, but she did eventually fall asleep.

She told Sharon she fucked Katya anyway.

xxx

The boyfriend got up early and left quietly for the gym; Katya made coffee and leaned against a door jamb in her underwear, watching Alaska sleep.

She looked so calm. Maybe things were going better with Sharon. Katya had forgotten to ask, and Alaska hadn't volunteered anything, which was unusual. Katya hoped it was a good sign. 

She didn't have any blinds, and the sun was shining at an angle she normally slept through, and it lit Alaska's face, where she slept on her side.

You need to stop staring, you creep, she told herself. But she'd always found it near impossible to look at anything else when Alaska was in the room.

And that had been true last night, too. With her boyfriend right there, his arm around her waist, Katya's attention had been sucked in, unerringly, by Alaska fucking Thunderfuck.

"Fuck," Katya whispered to herself. 

Alaska hummed and rolled over, so Katya retreated. She curled up on her bed and left the door open, in case Alaska needed something.

And then she blithely went on pretending none of it meant anything. 

It was easier for everyone that way.


	3. 2012

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Sharon Needles. Don't read this story if that will upset you.

They did make it to New Year's, barely: two days into 2012. Which was when the boyfriend found out both how much meth and how much ass Katya had done on New Year's Eve.

She saw Alaska a week later, and shoved her hand into Alaska's very tight jeans.

"What happened to the boyfriend?" Alaska asked, though she was already hard and didn't pretend to resist.

"Didn't last. Wanna fuck?"

Alaska did indeed want to fuck. More than once, even. And Katya was happy to oblige.

Alaska didn't seem entirely present, on stage or in bed. But that was okay.

Katya wasn't entirely present, either.

xxx

Alaska was happy to oblige, too. Because she and Sharon weren't fucking at all.

They'd argued between Christmas and New Year's, and Alaska had stomped off back to her mother's house where she'd basked in the loneliness and the pettiness, and refused to tell her family what was wrong.

Sharon sent her drunk texts the entire time. Alaska didn't answer any of them.

By the time she got back to Pittsburgh, for their New Year's Eve performance, Alaska was ready to kiss and make up. But she'd neglected to mention that in advance, and Sharon had fucked off to New York, leaving a pissy (and well-deserved, Alaska had to admit) note on Alaska's pillow.

Alaska cried and called herself an idiot and somehow got through half of the show without proving it on stage. At intermission, she finally texted an apology. Sharon didn't answer **that**.

What Sharon did do was text that World of Wonder had asked her to go to LA for some pickups right away, and that Alaska could join her if she wanted to. Which Alaska couldn't afford anyway, and Sharon **knew** that.

Oh, and by the way, the next text said, Sharon had also been invited to perform at a San Francisco club night Alaska had always wanted to be a part of.

Alaska lost her fucking mind, and called Sharon to rant about how entitled she was, and how she didn't deserve fame any more than Alaska did. Sharon ranted right back about being made to feel like an asshole for actually achieving something. Alaska hung up and cried over how much she fucking hated herself. 

By the time Sharon returned a few days later, conveniently just an hour before Alaska had to leave for a gig out of town, they were able to be civil, but cool. They shared a frosty kiss and grudging _I love yous_ at the door.

And then there was Katya, Katya who hated herself too, in a seedy motel in Buffalo, tugging on Alaska's dick. And Alaska's dick pretty much stood up and said, "Oh, thank **God**."

They didn't talk much, then or the next morning, when they woke up on sheets still wet with sweat. At some point, not talking had become unusual for them. But Alaska was lost in her own misery and couldn't bring herself to ask Katya what was wrong.

It was typical: she rarely remembered to ask about Katya's life. Because she wasn't just a jealous bitch, but a selfish one, too.

They made some self-deprecating jokes and fucked again ("One for the long, bitter road," Katya said as she filled her pipe) and drove away in opposite directions.

xxx

Alaska kept hating herself all the way home. Then she essentially fell at Sharon's feet and moaned, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you, I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Same thing that's wrong with me," Sharon said. "We're drag queens with trauma so unresolved we couldn't pick it out of a police lineup. And I love you, too."

They both cried during the make-up sex. Then they got steaming drunk and cried some more.

It was fucked up, but fucked up seemed to work for them. Or at least, she hoped it did.

xxx

Everything changed, for Alaska, when the first promos came out. She caught the pictures at work, during a break from making espressos for rich people, and suddenly she was giddy with pride.

Sharon looked amazing. The camera loved her. The make-up artist clearly loved her. The producers got her humor--Alaska could see that by the pose and the picture they chose. Sharon looked just as professional as everybody else there.

This was a real thing. Sharon was going to be so fucking famous, and Alaska would get to go along for the ride.

She was gleefully in love again, and she floated through the rest of her shift, and it was all going to be okay.

xxx

Katya stared at the promos on her ancient laptop. The shots were super high quality, definitely higher quality than last season's. She knew Jiggly a bit, from New York, and she'd heard of Latrice, and she was excited to get to see Chad who was already drag famous, and she was genuinely happy for both Sharon and Alaska.

"Tell her she looks fan-fiercing-tastic," Katya texted Alaska. "So happy for her! And you!"

"She says thanks," Alaska replied, with just about all the smileys on her phone.

"Feeling better?"

"1000x better."

Katya was glad. Happy Alaska was more fun than miserable, self-loathing Alaska. The self-loathing never went away completely, Katya knew from experience. But she liked it when Alaska got to forget, for a while.

xxx

Alaska didn't get to forget for long, and she didn't know what to feel about it.

No, that wasn't true. She knew how she was supposed to feel--proud and thrilled for her boyfriend. But she didn't know how to describe the actual emotions that bowled her over during the viewing parties at their local club.

There was Sharon, up on the screen and up on stage. And there was Alaska, tending bar in drag, both part of and apart from the celebration. Because she still needed a regular paycheck, while Sharon had already sashayed right past that.

Alaska didn't like to drink on the job, or rather, she knew that if she did drink, she'd forget how to mix and would lose the damn job. But Sharon was soused, of course, and so were most of their friends. It didn't seem right that Sharon was drunk without her. It didn't seem right that Sharon was on stage without her. 

Behind the bar, it was often very lonely.

Sometimes, she'd grab a friend and beg them to sit at the bar and talk to her in her free moments. It was tough, though. They didn't want to miss the party any more than Alaska did. 

Sometimes she'd get texts from Sharon's mom, because Sharon wouldn't be available to answer her questions for hours, and Alaska was just standing there.

Sometimes she'd text wisecracks to Sharon, even though Sharon wouldn't be available to see them for hours, either.

Lots of times, she texted Katya.

Katya was in the same time zone, nine hours away, a straight shot down I-90. Katya was either hosting a viewing party herself, or watching at home before going downstairs to get on stage. Katya liked to dissect the show the way Alaska did, with an artist's eye. And Katya had a knack for picking up on Alaska's moods, and saying what Alaska needed to hear. 

"I'm so jealous I could scream," Alaska texted Katya. "Sharon made Ru laugh with her very first line and I want it to be meeeee!"

"I thought you were playing the role of the happy supportive boyfriend now," Katya replied.

"I am!" Alaska had to take a break for an order then, but she went right back. "But apparently I'm also playing the role of the bratty four-year-old who didn't get as many toys as his little brother."

It was a few minutes before Katya replied. "That's a pretty wide range for one actor."

"It's a wide range for one brain. And one house."

Alaska got busy then, and it seemed like Katya did, too. 

"The blood!" Katya texted later that same night. "The artistry!"

"Oh fuck off."

"No, I mean it! My performance art prof would **die**."

"My costume design prof would cry," Alaska typed.

Then came the commercial, and the rush to the bar, and when Alaska got back to her phone, she found a new text.

"Then your costume design prof should be fired and they should hire Elvira instead."

xxx

"The Princess is cute," Alaska texted Katya. 

"You do like that meth look," Katya replied.

"I'm starting to reconsider that position."

xxx

"That wrestling shit scared the crap out of me," Alaska texted Katya. "And Sharon knew that, because she never said a word about it!"

"I would kick ass at that wrestling challenge, you have no idea. I'm so jealous."

"I would die, but I'm still jealous. I seriously hid under the bar for part of it."

Katya sent some thumbs up and then typed, "Bitch, I know ka-ra-tay!"

xxx

"Oh, God, that **dress** ," Alaska texted Katya during one of Ru's runways. "I would kill for that dress."

"She'll let you borrow it next year."

"Fuck off."

"Is it purple or blue?" Katya asked.

"I don't care."

A bit later, Katya wrote, "Tell me Willam fixes that makeup by the end of the season. The beard!"

"I'll ask."

"And ask how much work Miss Chad has had done, because that bitch gives **face**."

Alaska did try to ask Sharon when they got home, but Sharon was too drunk to remember.

xxx

"God, I wish that were me," Alaska texted Katya, while Sharon made Ru laugh some more on the screen. "I'm driving myself crazy."

"I told you, you'll get on next season," Katya wrote. "And then I'll be the one who's crazy."

Katya went away for a while, and then came back with, "Tell me Phi Phi is not like that in person."

"She's not. I've met her."

"Just very pageant?"

"And very young," Alaska added.

"We were that young like last year."

Laughing, Alaska typed, "TEA."

"How does she think everyone is going home every time?" Katya asked.

"You know they make them say bad shit about each other, right?"

"I would be so screwed. I can only say bad shit about myself."

Alaska laughed again, alone behind the bar, while the crowd hooted and cheered at the screen. "They'll love that too. Sharon talks about herself all the fucking time."

"Narcissism is a fine quality in a drag queen," Katya wrote.

"I'm a complete narcissist."

"No kidding."

"Hey!" 

xxx

"You know Jiggly, right?" Alaska texted Katya.

"A little. I texted her to say Sharon creeps me out, too. You know what a supportive friend I am."

"She's adorable. A mess costume-wise, but adorable."

"She is," Katya wrote, "but I'm sad to find out you and I have such stiff competition in the self-loathing category."

"I have a feeling there might be some character development in upcoming episodes. Stay tuned."

xxx

"Here's my new thesis statement," Alaska texted Katya. "If you talk to Ru like an equal, she'll treat you like an equal."

"I'd read that newsletter," Katya replied. "Here's mine: It's the girls who are afraid of making fools of themselves on stage who fuck themselves over."

"Luckily you and I don't have that problem."

"Neither does Sharon. Look at that hair."

xxx

"Daywalking **and** a hose? Jesus Christ," Katya texted. 

Alaska replied, hardly taking her eyes off the screen, "Sharon fucked up. **I** want to fuck her."

"I don't think you're her intended audience."

And wasn't that the truth, Alaska thought.

"Latrice," Katya wrote, "should win for those splits alone!"

"You're biased by how much you love pounding your pussy into the floor."

"How dare you."

xxx

"They can't both be in the bottom!" Alaska texted Katya. "I know Phi Phi and Sharon both make it to the end!"

"Don't ask me. I'm not the one with inside information I won't share," Katya texted back. And a little later, "Bets on whether Willam planned the puking?"

"No bet. It's Raining Men!"

"A classic!"

Alaska had an idea. "Is there a Russian version?"

"I'm going to check as soon as this episode is over," Katya wrote.

A couple customers asked for beer, which was quick and easy. Alaska took care of them and went back to her phone.

"What did Willam do?" Katya's last text said. "What did Willam do!"

"You'll have to ask her yourself," Alaska replied, because she didn't know the answer.

xxx

"Cruella DeVille on vacation in Aspen!" Katya texted. "God I love a queen with a story."

"See you on the slopes!"

"Old lady?" Even Katya's typing sounded indignant. "Less diva-ish? Are they blind?"

Alaska agreed with her. "How can you say that about Cruella DeVille?"

Katya disappeared, and Alaska made three cocktails, for three guys who treated her like she was a robot. There'd been more and more strangers at the viewing parties every week, and by now a good portion of the room had no idea who Alaska was. Which sounded bratty even in her head, but damn.

"The dogs!" Katya texted when she returned.

It made Alaska feel better. She smiled as she typed, "Top dog!"

"The runt! They say puns are the lowest form of comedy."

"And they're wrong," Alaska replied, very proud of this comeback: "Straight white guys are the lowest form of comedy."

"TEA."

xxx

Katya was hoping for a text after the taping of the finale, but she got a phone call instead. Alaska sounded overjoyed and animated and proud and full of secrets and shockingly sober.

"They filmed all three of them winning!" Alaska said, instead of hello.

"A three-way tie?" Katya asked before realizing that she was in public, walking on a crowded sidewalk to her retail job. She looked around to see if anybody had noticed, then ducked onto a side street. She didn't want to get Alaska in trouble, or to break her own NDA before she even got on the damn show.

"No!" Alaska said. Katya heard noise in the background that she assumed was a street in Los Angeles. "Three different endings and we won't find out who won until it's on TV like everybody else!"

Katya gasped an exaggerated gasp. "Is Sharon dying?"

"Sharon's fine. She's still inside doing interviews. I won't be able to sit still for a week!"

"So basically the spoiler is that you can't give me spoilers because you don't **know**? Why do I even talk to you?"

Alaska laughed. "A question I often ask myself."

"Same, gurl, same."

"Bitch," Alaska said with a laugh.

"It was fun, though? You sound really up."

"It was amazing. I'm so proud of her! She was the prettiest and the weirdest on the stage."

"Not that you're biased."

"Me? Never."

xxx

So Katya, like the rest of the proletariat, watched the finale unspoiled. She was hosting the viewing party, and she'd even made a little sign out of sketchbook paper that said, "Needles for president!" She texted a picture to Alaska, but Alaska was also hosting their finale viewing party, instead of tending bar. She was no doubt too excited, too drunk, too high, or all three, to notice or care what Katya sent.

"So happy for both of you!" Katya texted Alaska, and then she got Sharon's number from Jiggly, and texted Sharon, too.

It seemed only fair to congratulate her directly, considering the number of times Katya had fucked Sharon's boyfriend.

xxx

After that there were a few generic texts from Alaska, none of them with any actual information about her life. And then, a few weeks after Sharon won, Alaska was just gone.

Katya knew when filming started for season 5, and she could put two and two together.

"Lucky bitch," she said to herself, and prepared to forget about Alaska completely.

Because Alaska was going to be famous--because she **deserved** to be famous--and Katya would never hear from her again.

xxx

She did, though. Alaska texted, "What's up, bitch?" soon after filming ended. 

Katya had just gotten out of the shower, still dripping wet, and she pounced on her phone. The last time Alaska had disappeared, the year before when Sharon got back from filming, Katya had hardly noticed her absence. This time she had definitely noticed, and she definitely hadn't forgotten. 

"You're back!" Katya typed fast. "Did you win? Are you famous yet? Were there any bitch fights? Cat fights? Stolen wigs?"

"You're not supposed to know where I was!"

"I am a drag genius," Katya wrote. "You can't fool me. Thanks for the warning, by the way."

"I'm sorry." 

Then Katya's phone rang. 

"I'm sorry," Alaska said right away. "I didn't know how to tell you, and I knew you'd see through a lie. You see through everything."

Everything but myself, Katya thought. Now that she had a free hand, she grabbed a towel and started clumsily drying off. "Give me the rundown right now and I'll forgive you."

Alaska groaned. "I want to!" she whined. "I can't!"

"So I have to enjoy the suspense like all the other riffraff," Katya said. "For a **whole year**."

"You're not riffraff." 

"Of course I am. I am the riffiest of the raffiest."

"You're not riffraff," Alaska said again. Her voice was serious now.

"But you still won't tell me anything," Katya teased. "Why **do** I keep talking to you?"

"I still don't know," Alaska said. Her tone had changed again, and Katya was suspicious. "I promise I'll tell you when I see you, okay? I'm going on tour with Sharon for a while and they stop in Boston. I'll text you the date."

It was true, Katya **could** see through her. She'd wandered into her living room now, and she dropped the towel on the couch. "How's Sharon?" she asked.

"Sharon's having the time of her life and I can't wait to see her."

"Are you okay? You sound off."

"How would you know?"

Katya, shockingly, had enough self-esteem not to put up with that. "Okay," she said. "Bye."

"No, don't!" Alaska said desperately. "I'm sorry, that was a really dickish thing to say."

"Justin," Katya said. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I am. I'm fine. I'll text you the date ASAP." 

It was clearly a dismissal, so Katya just went along with it and said, "Okay. Have fun!" before Alaska's quick signoff.

She frowned as she put down her phone. "I can't wait to see how this turns out," she said sadly, to her empty apartment.

Then she forgot about the towel and left it on the couch for three days, before her nose informed her about the smell. 

xxx

Alaska wasn't fine, no matter what she'd told Katya, or herself. Alaska wasn't fine at all.

The truth was, and Alaska didn't like admitting this even in her own head. The truth was that she and Sharon were falling apart. She hoped going on tour with her would help--she told herself fiercely that going on tour would help--but she had to work hard to believe it.

Alaska hadn't seen her yet. Sharon hadn't been at the airport, like Alaska had for her, last year. Sharon was on tour and they'd talked plenty since Alaska had left the set. But it wasn't right.

She'd turned the love story up to high for the cameras, so high that she'd started to believe it herself: they were the perfect drag couple, they were hopelessly in love, they were soulmates and Alaska couldn't wait to see her again. But as soon as her plane had set down in Pittsburgh, reality pulled her right back to where she'd been the day she left.

There'd been a few weeks between Sharon winning and Alaska getting locked in a hotel room for filming, and Alaska was not proud of how she'd behaved. But she was even less proud of how Sharon had behaved.

The free booze and the free drugs had been flowing, and when Alaska was there, they flowed for her, too. But the trade was also flowing, and while Sharon didn't take anybody up on it while Alaska was with her, Sharon was out of town more than she was home.

Ru girls could get all the trade they wanted. A dozen men a night, if Sharon didn't pass out first.

Alaska had tried not to be jealous then, and she was still trying now. She'd taken advantage of their open-away-from-home policy plenty of times herself. But it had quickly reached a point where Sharon couldn't even tell Alaska about all of her conquests, because there were so damn many and Sharon was too drunk to remember most of them.

And that was the other thing.

She and Sharon hadn't always been as conscientious with condoms in their own bed as they should have been, but they'd agreed to always be safe when they fucked other people. But she knew Sharon was getting careless with all the trade. She knew it before she left for LA, she ignored it the entire time she was in LA, and she knew it now that she was back. Too many drugs, too many twinks, too many blackouts. And now Sharon had had an extra six weeks to indulge.

Alaska didn't want to tell anybody all of that. Especially Katya. Especially **herself**.

And she really didn't want to tell anyone about this:

The day before Alaska had left, Sharon got an email from some asshole she'd fucked the week before, saying she should get tested for gonorrhea. And Alaska was so desperate for her, so afraid Sharon wouldn't be there when she got back, that she let Sharon fuck her anyway. Twice. Bareback.

And that was how she'd ended up with a full-blown case of the clap during filming, and why she'd had to give in and beg a PA to get her some antibiotics. 

Perfect.

It'll be better on tour, she told herself over and over. It'll be better, it'll be better, it'll be better.

xxx

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Alaska heard someone say. She looked up, and the someone was Pandora Boxx, with Sharon right behind her.

"I think you mean bat," Sharon told Pandora, but her eyes were on Alaska. "Hi, honey."

Alaska bolted up out of her chair in the hotel lobby and ran to kiss Sharon without even saying hello.

The kiss went on a little long, but Alaska didn't notice until the catcalls started.

"Leave us alone," Sharon said, her face still close to Alaska's. "We're in love."

Alaska was too overwhelmed to speak, and determined not to cry.

Sharon threw an arm around her and turned to face their audience.

"Ladies and others, I believe you're all familiar with the vision of loveliness and absurdity that is my boyfriend, Alaska."

There was a chorus of hellos, and nice-to-meet yous from the girls she hadn't met yet in person.

"Sharon's got her trade locked up for the night," Willam said. "More for the rest of us."

"You mean more cash for you," Phi Phi said.

It was dressing room talk, familiar and comfortable even if Alaska didn't know them well yet. She let it wash over her and instantly felt at home. She still hadn't said a word.

"You okay?" Sharon asked quietly.

Alaska could only nod, and Sharon kissed her again.

"Come on, let's go check in so I can ravish you upstairs," Sharon said.

They followed the others in line for the front desk, while the tour manager called out instructions for the crew and the girls.

Sharon wasn't paying attention to anyone else, and Alaska barely noticed the commotion. It was going to be better, now that she was with Sharon. It was.

Latrice was right in front of them, and she looked on approvingly. "She really missed you, gurl," she told Alaska.

"I missed her, too," Alaska said.

"It speaks!" Sharon said.

"She says you won," Latrice said.

"She absolutely won."

"Stop saying that!" Alaska told Sharon. She laughed, but she meant it. "You're making me nervous and I **told** you I'm not going to win."

"Yeah, but you always underestimate yourself," Sharon said. "Which is what makes us a matched set, because I always overestimate myself."

Latrice was now talking to the woman at the desk, and she missed Sharon's joke. Alaska could tell Sharon was disappointed.

She smiled and grabbed Sharon's hand and said, "Perfectly matched."

Sharon was her soulmate, and they were going to get through this together. No matter what.

xxx

"I think I'm bad at analyzing myself," Alaska texted Katya, from wherever she was on tour.

"You don't say," Katya replied.

She knew Alaska was serious, because Alaska didn't tease her right back.

"I don't know if what I think I'm feeling is what I'm really feeling," Alaska wrote. "You know?"

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Katya typed. "I have never experienced that in my life."

It took Alaska a minute to respond. "That was sarcasm, right?"

"Of course it was sarcasm. Is your joke-o-meter off today?"

"Today," Alaska wrote. "This week, this month."

Katya frowned. "I thought things were going okay?"

"They are. It's just me that's trouble."

Katya didn't buy that for a second. It took two to create the kind of chaos that was Sharon and Alaska.

Alaska's texts and calls had been bubbly at first. New places, new people, drag drag drag, 24 hours a day with Sharon was all she'd ever wanted, their relationship was perfect. The other queens were funny and kind, and Alaska was happy to have the opportunity to observe from the sidelines, knowing she'd be the one on stage next year.

Katya was jealous as fuck, but happy for her. 

But doubt had crept in, from Alaska, after a couple weeks. 

"Trade trade trade trade," Alaska had texted late one night, while Katya was busy earning her keep in bed and couldn't answer.

"I'm so tired of being social all the time," Alaska wrote, a few days later. "I want to just hide in my room."

Katya was able to reply right away, this time. "Why can't you? Nobody would notice."

Alaska told her to fuck off, and when she didn't say anything else, Katya realized she'd hit a nerve.

"Sorry," she typed. "I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd notice."

"That's something, I guess."

"I'm sorry," Katya wrote again. "I misjudged. I thought we were the comedy act in our set list."

"No, I'm sorry. I seem to be taking offense at everything today."

Katya did not let herself ask, _Today?_ which was a read Alaska would appreciate in a better mood. 

"But it's part of your charm," she wrote instead. She added, "And mine," just in case. She wanted to ask what else Alaska had taken offense to lately, but she thought she should wait until Alaska wanted to share.

"Why we get along so well," Alaska wrote. "But back to the self-analysis."

"You know what I think? Honestly? I think you're fine at self-analysis. You just don't always listen to yourself."

"That sounds like you."

"Oh, it's absolutely me," Katya wrote. "But it's also you."

"Fewer mind-altering substances might help."

"Wash your mouth out with soap and never say that again," Katya quipped.

Alaska went silent for a few minutes, then texted, "Maybe we're the matched set." She followed that up with a dozen wink emojis to suggest she was joking.

But when Katya asked her to explain, Alaska wouldn't.

xxx

The girls were marking their songs on stage during sound check, and Alaska was sitting halfway back in the theater, sketching makeup charts for some new palettes she'd found at a bargain store near their cheap hotel. But she didn't have one of the colored pencils she needed, and her current chart had somehow turned into what Sharon had worn onstage, the night before.

She'd hoped to be invisible, but Michelle found her anyway. She handed Alaska a bottle of water. Alaska hid Sharon's face under one of her earlier drawings.

"Thanks," she said, hoping Michelle would go.

"That's lovely. You're really talented," Michelle said. She sat down next to Alaska. "I thought you might have worked up a thirst."

Alaska smiled, opened the cap, and took a sip, to be grateful. Michelle on the road was always a mother hen, making sure they all ate and got at least a little sleep. But now she looked like she really wanted to talk.

"I heard you and Sharon had another fight this morning," she said.

Of course they had. They'd been fighting, again, because Alaska was making Sharon late. Alaska had had a tough time getting out of bed lately, which wasn't like her; she hated being late, and she'd been keeping drag hours for most of her adult life. But she was slow and sluggish in the mornings now, and Sharon seemed to think Alaska was doing it on purpose. 

Sharon thought a lot of things.

Shrugging, Alaska said, "We fight, we make up, we fight."

"As long as you're okay." And then Michelle lapsed into silence.

Alaska, feeling suddenly awkward, rifled through her pencil box.

After a few minutes, Michelle came out with it. "What's up with you, sweetie?"

"What do you mean?"

"Hiding back here, quiet all the time."

"It's not like I'm in the show." Alaska said it with a chuckle, trying to brush Michelle's concern aside.

"You will be next year," Michelle said. 

"I know!" She exaggerated her excitement. "I can't wait."

Michelle studied her for a while, and Alaska nervously went back to drawing.

"So you'll light up again next year?" Michelle said finally. "When you're the star?"

"I always light up when I'm on stage, mama."

"That's not true."

Alaska looked up at her. "What?"

"I saw you on stage last week, at that club in Portland, after the show."

"You did? I didn't see you."

"I ducked out early. But I didn't see **you**."

"You just said you did."

"No," Michelle said evenly. "I saw you. But I didn't see **you**."

"Is that supposed to be a read?" was all Alaska could think to ask.

"I spent that whole season, on set, begging you to show us the real Alaska. And when you did, I loved her. Where's that girl now?"

"Off night, I guess," Alaska said. "I was probably really drunk."

"No. It wasn't the first time I've been to one of your side gigs. When you're alone, you're brilliant. But when you're with Sharon, it's all about Sharon." 

Michelle was now looking at Alaska with an intensity that made Alaska feel numb.

"You need to grab that spotlight, gurl," Michelle finished.

Alaska just stared in confusion. She and Sharon had been performing together for years, and audiences, except for some drunk assholes here and there, loved them. She didn't understand.

"You're a smart one," Michelle said. "You are one of the smartest girls in this building right now. Use those smarts for you, not for anybody else."

At Alaska's continued blank stare, Michelle stood up and said, "Just think about it."

Alaska didn't plan to.

xxx

Katya saw who was calling and answered with, "I'm hanging up my hooker heels." 

"Time for a new career?" Alaska asked dubiously. 

"No, I hung them out the window and I'm hoping this fresh polluted air will drown out the stank."

"I don't think it works that way." But her laugh sounded grateful and even relieved. Alaska had been a bit morose for the past few days.

"I live in hope," Katya said.

Alaska didn't reply and Katya knew it was easier, sometimes, for her to hear about Katya's second job than to think about her own life. 

"Anyway," Katya said, determined to help if she could. "Remember that guy who shortchanged me last week?"

"He couldn't get it up!" Alaska recalled. 

"Yes, him! The one who told me it was my fault he was flaccid and I didn't deserve to be paid!"

"I seriously don't know how you put up with these people." 

"If I didn't put up with them I'd have nothing to entertain you with," Katya said, and went back to her story. "So I saw him on the subway yesterday. He panicked and ran back out the door and tried to look all nonchalant waiting for the next train, but I could still see the boner he was trying to hide."

"Just how many former tricks do you have avoiding you in the greater Boston metropolitan area?"

"At least half the gay male population," Katya said, and was rewarded with some low giggles.

After a minute Alaska asked, "What's that music in the background?"

Katya turned it up on her laptop, where she'd been watching the video over and over, and practicing. "I'm learning the words to a sad, sad ballad about unrequited love. It's exquisitely despondent in that way only Russians can be."

She didn't expect Alaska to get either pensive or inquisitive. But Alaska said, after a moment, "Have you ever been in unrequited love?"

"I've never been in any kind of love, mama."

Alaska laughed as if she didn't believe it.

xxx

When the tour stopped in Boston, they were at a big club Alaska had never been to before. By that time she was bored watching the show every night, and itching to spread her drag wings on her own, and she'd already promised to go see Katya on stage.

So she called Katya's manager.

"Of course," he said. "We'd love to have you, if Katya doesn't mind. She's hosting."

"I know," Alaska said.

He chuckled. "Of course you know, what was I thinking. You're welcome anytime, but without booking you I can only pay you in tips."

"Tips would be plenty," Alaska said. She didn’t intend to keep them anyway.

Then she called Katya, and Katya squealed and said Alaska could borrow whatever she could find that would fit.

"Mind if I don't go with you tonight?" Alaska asked Sharon, as they finished lunch at a vegetarian place Katya had recommended, in Chinatown. "I feel like I need to do my own thing."

"Would that thing involve a certain queen who lives above a certain bar?" Sharon asked slyly.

"You know we won't-"

"I know. I won't, either.

The waitress came to take away their empty dishes, and they both thanked her warmly. They'd had plenty of crappy jobs, and they knew how far a thank you could go on a bad day.

But Alaska was stuck on the easy way Sharon had said _I know_.

Alaska was so fucking dependable. She wanted to be a surprise sometimes. She wanted Sharon to be jealous, just once.

But she didn't say that. She pretended everything was fine, just like she always did. "I just want to do some random crazy shit on stage," she said. "And it's like two blocks away."

"Oh, I get it, honey. I'd be bored to tears following me around the country, too.

"I'm not bored to tears," Alaska quipped. "I'm bored to whiskey."

That did take Sharon by surprise, and she laughed. "You little brat," she said. "Just make sure you can find your way back to the hotel after all that whiskey."

"It's literally two blocks in the other direction. This town is a fucking postage stamp."

"I think only the gay parts," Sharon said. "Have you seen anything outside of the gay parts? All that history and shit?"

"I saw the theater where Charlotte Cushman made her stage debut. It's a church now."

"So she takes you out of the gay parts to show you the other gay parts?"

"I'll put in a request for more culture next time," Alaska said dryly.

The check arrived, and she watched while Sharon took out her card. She couldn't wait until she had enough money to grab the checks like that.

"Does it bother you?" Alaska said. "That I hang out with her?"

She almost wanted Sharon's answer to be _yes_.

But Sharon said, "No, why should it?

"It shouldn't. I just felt like I ought to make sure."

"You're not taking the blow, are you? I **will** be bothered if you take the blow."

Alaska laughed. "Don't worry. She doesn't even like it."

"Oh, riiiiight," Sharon said, stretching it out. "Crystal methamphetamiiiiiiiine."

"Like you and I have any moral high ground," Alaska teased. "How much have you snorted today? And off of whose penis?"

"Only yours, darling."

The three businesswomen at the next table turned to look down on them, and that was their signal to leave.

So while Sharon dragged up at the hotel, Alaska packed up some drag and slipped through the alleys to Katya's. She knew the way now. She was sure she could find it drunk.

"Culture?" Katya laughed. "She wants me to expose you to more culture?" 

"She was joking!"

"Would you like to strike up a conversation with the mold on the bottom of my shower curtain?"

"That's so disgusting," Alaska said, smiling anyway.

"Love me, love my mental illness decor," Katya said. But she took Alaska to an old colonial cemetery not far from her apartment, spread her arms to the sky, and said, "Culture!" A minute later, she gasped theatrically and pointed and added, "Look! I told you it was haunted!"

Alaska pretended not to be amused. "That's a bird."

" **Now** it's a bird," Katya said in a decent impression of a TV psychic. "But what was it **yesterday**?"

"Only the stars can tell me?"

"Exactly. That's fifty bucks, you can pay me on the way out."

xxx

Katya's show started later than Sharon's. They had plenty of time. So they got coffee and tea and cupcakes and sat on a park bench to catch up. It wasn't far from the cemetery.

Katya oohed and aahed and gasped in all the right places while Alaska told her more than she should about being on set. Katya grabbed Alaska's arm in suspense, laughed, wheezed, flailed her hands and her feet.

It was fun, telling her. It was a lot more fun than it had been with Sharon, who'd already lived the same adventure. Telling Katya almost anything was fun, really--Katya came with a guarantee of gratifying reactions.

"But you didn't win, right?" Katya teased at the end. Alaska had told her that at least five times.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, not you, too," Alaska said with a big smile. She knew Katya was joking.

"Well, I still think you **should**. But if you tell me you sucked, I believe you." 

"I didn't suck, either, you bitch."

Katya's laughter scared the pigeons away.

xxx

It had been a while since Alaska had performed without Sharon somewhere in the building. She hadn't even brought any music, just hammed it up with whatever they threw at her. The audience loved her. Her self-esteem rose with every hoot and holler and even a few twenty-dollar bills, which Alaska planned to hide in Katya's apartment so Katya couldn't say no.

"If you get more tips than me, I'm quitting drag," Katya said in her ear, after they'd both faked it, unconvincingly, to Celine Dion. A Britney song came on, a song Alaska knew Katya disliked, and they faked it to that, too.

They were laughing too much to lip sync, and they didn't even notice the newcomers at first: Sharon, and Manila, and Jiggly, still in costume from their final number. And suddenly nobody was interested in the stage anymore, the stage where Katya and her friends made their fucking rent money.

Alaska was pissed off, and Katya was obviously uncomfortable, but they kept up with the show. Katya waved the rest of the local girls onto the tiny stage for another number. But the tips had already disappeared.

When the song ended, the crowd virtually shoved the Ru girls on stage. Sharon grabbed Alaska's hand to keep her up there with them, and all the cash reappeared out of nowhere.

Katya made herself scarce. Alaska had to squint to see her, in the shadows in the back. She was alternating between chatting with what looked like johns, and glancing at the stage with an expression Alaska couldn't read but didn't like.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked Sharon as the music changed again. 

Jiggly overheard and stared at Alaska. She seemed to sober up right there and realize what they'd done. "Oh, fuck," she said.

"Alaska, you look fantastic!" Manila said. "We need to get you up on stage more!"

But Alaska was still watching Katya. She turned to see Sharon, who had clearly snorted a lot and was on that grandiose wave that tore down everyone in its path. Sharon kept a tight grip on Alaska's hand, and practically dragged her to the nearest tip.

When the next song started--a Russian song, it was **Katya's song** \--Alaska shoved Sharon away and stomped off stage to calm down, before she hit somebody.

Katya found her hiding in the cooler. She closed the door behind herself, but didn't say anything.

"We ruined your fucking night. I'm sorry," Alaska said, pacing in the narrow path between boxes.

"Whatever," Katya said, because Katya hated confrontation and wouldn't call anyone out, even when Alaska deserved it. "More motivation to get on the show, right? If it's that easy to steal the spotlight."

"I'm going to tell her off. Sharon. I know it was her idea. She's high, she's being stupid. If anybody did that in Pittsburgh, she'd shoot them."

"That's none of my business," Katya said. "But I know **you** didn't invite them. Okay?"

"Take my tips," Alaska said. She pulled out sweaty bills from everywhere she'd hidden them.

"No. I don't take money from you."

"I'll give you Sharon's, too, she won't even notice."

"No. You don't pay me. That's part of our deal."

"For fuck's sake, it doesn't mean I think you're a whore! It's not because you're a prostitute. It's because you need to eat!"

"So do you," Katya said calmly. "Go fight with your boyfriend. Today was really fun, before that. But I need to go. My trick's waiting at the bar."

"I'm sorry," Alaska said again.

Katya didn't reply. She just left. And she wasn't in the bar when Alaska had calmed down enough to reemerge.

Sharon and the other girls were gone, too, and the locals were on stage again. Alaska snuck back into their cramped dressing room and left all of her tips in a pile on the floor, so they'd know it was for everyone to share.

Katya might not want the money. But Katya's friends deserved it a lot more than Alaska did.

xxx

The next day, from the tour bus, where she was sitting as far away from Sharon as possible, Alaska texted Katya to say thanks for the hospitality. Then there was some small talk before she got up the courage to ask.

"Am I different? When I'm with Sharon?"

It took Katya a few minutes to respond, which in Alaska's mind could only mean the answer was yes.

"On stage or off?" Katya asked.

Both, but Alaska just typed, "On."

"Why do you ask?"

"Is that a yes?"

"I think you have an answer in mind already," Katya wrote. How someone who spent that much time strung out on meth could be so perceptive, Alaska didn't know.

"Michelle said something a while ago. I can't get it out of my mind."

"Because you think she's right?"

After an eternity when Alaska couldn't come up with an answer, Katya texted, "I've got to go, sorry. Call me later if you want to talk about it?"

"Sure," Alaska typed, but later, she didn't call.

xxx

Katya was on the outs with all of her drag friends.

"I didn't ask them to come," she insisted. "I didn't even ask Alaska to come!"

"You're **why** they came, though," one of them told her.

"Where Alaska goes, Sharon follows," another said. "Sharon keeps a tight leash."

"She left you all her tips, didn't she?" Katya asked.

"I think that was Jiggly."

Katya gave up. She'd asked Jiggly about it, when Jiggly had texted to apologize. Jiggly had replied with, "Oh, fuck, no, I should have, fuck," so Katya knew it was Alaska. But the girls would think what they wanted to think, and they'd get over it when they wanted to get over it.

They were still bitching while Katya gathered her things to leave. She heard them, but she didn't care to join in the conversation.

"Fucking arrogant Drag Race bitches."

"You'd still go if they called you, though."

"You're damn right I would. I'm three months behind on my electric bill, they're going to cut me off."

"Sellout," someone teased, and then all the voices rose at once, full of shade.

"Every queen in America would sell out in a second," Katya muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. She thought she understood, maybe, how Alaska had felt when she got that call that said _no_ for season 4.

She called her manager in the morning to ask for a couple days off, and spent most of them lying in bed.

xxx

It took a few days for Alaska to talk herself into it, even though she knew it was what she needed to do.

She got up early one morning, and was packed and ready and waiting on a chair when Sharon opened her eyes.

"Turning over a new leaf?" Sharon said.

"Yes," Alaska said. "I'm going home."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic. I don't even remember whatever you're still pissed about."

"You forgot about being an asshole on stage, what a surprise." Alaska stood up and took hold of her suitcase.

"Whatever," Sharon said, climbing out of bed. "I've got a bus to catch."

Alaska closed her eyes and held her body tight, so she wouldn't do anything even more stupid. But she couldn't stop herself from saying something stupid. "I'm really sick of getting in the way of all the notches on your bedpost."

"You're not. Hate sex with you beats anonymous any day." Sharon tossed things at random into her open luggage, not looking at Alaska.

It pissed Alaska off almost as much as it hurt. "Hate sex? Is that what we're having?"

"It was a fucking joke, Justin. Calm the fuck down and help me get all this shit together."

"No. I'm leaving today." Alaska wheeled her one bag to the door. "If you find something of mine in your luggage, just keep it until you get home."

Sharon looked at her now, and turned her nose up. "If you're going to be such a brat about it, you might as well go. I've got shit to do."

So Alaska went.

xxx

They were in Philadelphia, so it was easy enough for Alaska to catch a bus and go home to sulk. At least this time, she had the sense to make other plans. She didn't want to see the friends she shared with Sharon, anyway.

The best thing about Sharon's tour had been catching up with queens from her season, and processing some of the experience together. She'd talked to Roxxxy in Florida, Alyssa in Texas, Coco in Vegas, Detox in LA, Honey in San Francisco, Jinkx in Seattle. 

Now that she was home, she told them in a group text that she had absolutely no gigs booked, and the offers came pouring in. She invited them to Pittsburgh in turn, and from there they were all inviting each other all over the country. "Drag sleepaway camp," Alyssa called it, though she spelled sleepaway wrong.

"You have grown in power, my young apprentice," Katya, her therapist, told her on the phone.

"Are you watching those stupid prequels again?"

"Absolutely not. Which means yes."

Alaska laughed. She was starting to feel like herself again. Whatever herself was.

xxx

"This is so much better than the Drag Race tour," Alaska told Katya a week or so later.

Katya reminded her that her season 5 sisters would be on tour with her next year, and to Alaska that sounded wonderful. When Katya joined them, once she finally got on the show, it would be even better.

She and Sharon were back to talking every day, and they'd both apologized. Still there were a lot of silences, and it turned out that being on stage with Jinkx or Roxxxy or Detox was almost as much fun as being on stage with Sharon. It just didn't have the promise of fucking afterwards, which, at the moment, Alaska didn't mind.

She was still thinking about how much Sharon's hate sex line had stung.

She was thinking about what Michelle had said, too. Grabbing the spotlight for herself felt damn good.

xxx

In October, Alaska was visiting Penny in Ohio while the official tour stopped in Louisville. She cautiously asked Sharon if she could visit.

"Of course you can," Sharon said. "I miss the hate sex."

It still stung. "Stop saying that. I don't hate you."

"You probably should."

"Probably. Stop saying it anyway."

They greeted one another desperately in Sharon's hotel room. They fucked like it was the end of the world, and then they fought like it was the end of the world. 

It might as well have been hate sex. Sharon had brought up the notches on her bedpost, in an awful attempt to be funny.

Alaska swung her legs over the side of the bed and put her back to Sharon. "Are you being safe, at least?" she asked peevishly. "With all that trade you can't even remember to tell me about?"

"You don't want to know about them!" Sharon said. "You bitch and moan every time, and we have a fucking agreement! Which you've enjoyed just as much as I have, by the way."

"Telling each other is half of the agreement!" Alaska shouted. They'd done some lines after the sex, because that was what they did, and it wasn't until right then that Alaska remembered she hadn't touched the stuff in weeks--since she last saw Sharon--and hadn't missed it at all. 

Her brain felt full of bees. She stood up and stalked around the room, gathering her clothes.

"I'll tell you if you promise to be reasonable," Sharon said. She got up and started getting dressed, too.

"I'll be reasonable if you can tell me honestly that you use a fucking condom every single time."

"We both know it's not about the condoms, Justin. Let's be honest, at least."

"Then why don't you tell me what it's about, Aaron?"

Sharon did, at length. Alaska ended up in tears, but Sharon ended up with what was going to be a very black eye.

"I'm sorry," Alaska said, tearing up. It wasn't the first time they'd hit each other, but it was the first that would leave that kind of mark. "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I did-"

She cut herself off as Sharon left the room to get ice, wearing only her jeans and shouting all the way down the corridor and back.

Alaska finished dressing while Sharon was gone. She did know why she'd done it. She knew exactly why she'd done it. Sharon had goaded her into it, and Alaska had goaded Sharon into the goading. 

They were becoming experts at cutting one another without knives.

Sharon returned, but shoved Alaska away when she tried to help with the ice and the washcloth. Her eye was already getting purple.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you," Alaska chanted, standing with her arms wrapped around herself. "I can't believe I did that."

"I can," Sharon said without humor. She was looking in the mirror, trying to see her face from every angle. "Fuck, it is going to take forever to cover this up, and I only have two hours."

The bees were still there. "Makeup?" Alaska said. "You want to complain about the makeup?"

"Right now I do. This is how I earn the fucking cash you just lined your nose with."

"Money and makeup," Alaska said. She felt like her heart was in a vise.

"Money and fucking makeup," Sharon repeated.

Alaska closed her eyes to breathe. When she opened them, Sharon was still studying her reflection, not looking at Alaska at all.

"If that's all that matters," Alaska said in a voice she didn't recognize, "I think I'd better leave."

Sharon did turn and look then, watching Alaska violently toss the few other things she'd unpacked into her bag. 

"Should I send you pictures of all my trade and all my condoms?" Sharon asked ruthlessly. "If you want to know so badly."

"Sure," Alaska said. "Go ahead."

The door wouldn't slam behind her. She tried.

xxx

"And **then** she sends me a picture of a penis with herpes sores that I **know** she downloaded from the web. She's not that stupid."

Katya strained toward her mouth. "Could we get back to what you were doing, please?"

"Oh." Alaska laughed. "Sorry." She sucked Katya's dick between her lips again and said with her mouth full, "Distracted." 

"Very," Katya said. "Oh, I like that, do that again."

This visit had been planned weeks in advance--two shows on a Saturday night--and Katya had been looking forward to it. Aside from the worrisome fact that she'd started to look forward to spending time with Alaska fucking Thunderfuck, Katya had intended to take advantage, very much, of Alaska's long, lithe body and long, thick dick.

But Alaska wasn't herself. She wouldn't stop talking, for one thing, and that was usually Katya's gig.

Alaska finished Katya off anyway, and started talking again without a breath in between. "So I told her I wanted proof that she'd fucked the herpes guy."

Katya was gasping and still hard, and she tackled Alaska onto her back. She wanted to rub their dicks together until it fucking hurt, and if she was lucky, it would make Alaska shut the fuck up.

"So she sent me five herpes dicks instead, with herself standing next to the guys in the picture. I swear to God she stood on a table at a club and asked-"

Fuck this, Katya thought. She fell onto her back and interrupted with, "Hey, you know what?"

"Hmmm?" Alaska asked, like she'd just noticed Katya was there.

"The fucking is great as always, and I know I'm the world's best listener, but can I listen later? It's not so fun when your naked playmate's only pillow talk is about her toxic relationship."

"Toxic?" Alaska asked. Katya saw her jaw set.

"I just mean maybe we can keep the serious talk out there." She waved towards the rest of her apartment. "And not in- Oh, don't do that."

Alaska had gotten up and was yanking her clothes on defensively. "Fine. If even **you** don't want to talk to me, then I'm totally **fucked**." And she stormed out of the bedroom.

Katya laughed before she could help herself. "That's not what I said, you psycho!" she shouted. "All I said was that sex should be fun!"

She got no response, and she lay there expecting the front door to slam and Alaska to exit her life permanently. Maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.

The door didn't slam. The door didn't open. There was just a bit of a thud, as of a very bony ass hitting hardwood.

After waiting a couple minutes to see if anything would change, Katya got up, put her pants back on, and headed out to check the damage.

Alaska was sitting down, back against the door, hunched over with her head in her hands. Not making a sound.

Katya didn't make a sound, either. She slid down the wall to sit next to Alaska.

"I'm sorry," Alaska said. "You didn't say anything wrong, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"I forgive you."

"Why can't I be even the tiniest bit rational about this?"

"I just want to note for the record," Katya said, trying for a laugh, "that you said that, not me."

She got a rueful chuckle, and Alaska sat up straight with a sigh, her fingers twisting together in her lap. "Sex should be fun," she said. "You're right."

"I'm glad we're on the same page," Katya said lightly.

"And it's not fair to expect you to put up with-"

"Fair has nothing to do with it," Katya said before Alaska could finish. "I want to listen. I like listening. Just not-"

"In bed. Yeah."

They breathed next to each other for a little while, and then Alaska sighed again.

"It's not fun," she said. "With Sharon. It's not fun anymore."

"I'm sorry," Katya said sincerely.

"Nothing's fun anymore."

Katya looked at her, hard. "Nothing at all, ever? Because if that's the case, I'm taking you to see a shrink right now."

Alaska was already shaking her head. "Nothing with Sharon. Talking, fucking, thinking about her, cleaning up after her. Nothing."

"I'm sorry," Katya said again, with a wince this time.

"It just hurts. All the time." Tears had snuck into Alaska's voice. "All the fucking time. And I know it's all my fault."

"It's not."

"It is," Alaska insisted, and Katya decided to let that one go until Alaska was in a better place.

"I love her so fucking much." Alaska wiped her cheeks with two fists. "But it hurts all the time, and I don't know how to fix it."

Katya had a few theories. She kept them to herself.

"I don't even want to go home. I love my house, and I'm dreading walking in the front door."

"Maybe," Katya said delicately, "you should tell all that to Sharon, not me."

"No, but you're actually objective." She turned her whole body to face Katya, crossing her legs in lotus position. "What do I do?"

Katya exhaled, and winced some more, and thought about it, while Alaska watched expectantly. 

Finally she managed, "I am so far from an expert on this, and you're crazy for asking. I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about."

Alaska's expression said _go on_ , so Katya did.

"But if it were me, well." She took another deep breath. She didn't know if Alaska would explode when she heard what Katya had to say. "If it were **me** ," she continued. "I might want to think about pain, and joy."

"What does that mean?" Alaska asked, her nose wrinkling up, but she still seemed receptive.

"If it were me," Katya said again. "I'd think that maybe, **for me** , if something causes more pain than joy, if anything causes more pain than joy, it might be time to-" she waved a hand around.

"What, break up?"

"I was going to say reevaluate, but it's a fill in the blank. If it were **me** ," she added, when she saw a hint of fire in Alaska's eyes.

"Does crystal meth cause more pain than joy?" Alaska snapped.

"Hell no. Liquor, yes. Meth, no."

Alaska laughed, though Katya could tell she didn't want to.

"And this is all about me, remember," Katya said. "If I were in your giant fucking shoes."

"They're not that big, you bitch."

"Big enough." Katya looked around. "You didn't even put your shoes on. How were you going to leave?"

"I told you, I'm not rational. I don't know what rational is anymore."

"I think you do. Just not about footwear."

Alaska cracked up. "Bitch." And then, uncertainly, "Can I still stay?"

"As long as I'm alive," Katya said, "I've got a floor and a couch with your name on it." She thought. "Name on them?"

"Them, I think."

"Just promise me. **Promise** me. That you won't take any of my advice without consulting actual sane people first."

"That's a good plan," Alaska said with a grateful smile. "I promise."

Katya stood up and held out a hand. "Come on, it's drag time."

Alaska didn't take her hand, and she didn't move. She looked away, shy again. 

Oh, fuck, Katya thought.

"There's something else," Alaska said, and Katya could hear the guilt in her voice. 

"Okay," Katya said. She sat heavily on her couch, a few feet away from Alaska.

"I wanted to get back at her. For the pictures."

"Okay."

"So I found some random guys on Grindr, and I had a threesome."

"Okay."

"Last week."

"Last week? When you were in-"

"Pittsburgh, yeah."

"In Pittsburgh," Katya echoed.

"In our house."

Katya was straining forward to listen by this time, jaw open and eyes wide. "In your **house**? Yours and Sharon's house?"

"In our-"

"No!" Katya said. 

"-bed."

This was a fucking soap opera. "In your bed," she said. "In your house? In **Pittsburgh**? Are you trying to ruin your life?"

With a dark chuckle, Alaska said, "Looks like it."

"Were you **high**?"

"God, I don't even have that excuse. Turns out I don't like coke much when Sharon's not around."

"You were drunk, though," Katya said hopefully. "You must have been drunk."

"For the threesome, yeah," Alaska said. Her voice was dull, like she was telling the most boring story ever. "Not when I went on Grindr."

"Jesus Christ," Katya said. "I wish I didn't like you so much, so I could laugh at you."

"I don't like me, and I can't laugh at it." Alaska looked away, winced, and bit her lip before looking back. "I recorded it."

"You **what**?"

"I made a video. For Sharon."

"Wow." Katya slouched back into her sofa, almost but not quite speechless. "I'm sorry, I have to say this. That is some serious self-sabotage. That is next-level self-sabotage. It's impressive, actually. Credit where credit is due."

"Thanks," Alaska said dryly, but she didn't seem angry. She just seemed resigned.

"Did Sharon explode?" How were they still together? Katya wondered. How had Sharon not dumped her on the spot?

Alaska shook her head. "I haven't sent it yet."

"Thank God for that." Katya crossed herself, and Alaska attempted the same. 

"No, here," Katya said. "Fucking Protestants." She stood up, and crouched before Alaska to guide her hand.

Alaska laughed at her, a little. "Will this do any good if I don't believe in God?"

"It can't fucking hurt."

"I guess I need all the help I can get." She looked up and crossed herself again, almost getting it right this time.

"You need help flushing your entire damn phone down the toilet," Katya said. "We'd have to piss in the sink after, but that's no hardship."

"I have to do it, don't I?"

Katya's forehead wrinkled. "Piss in the sink?"

"No! Break up with her." She was tearing up again. "I have to grow a pair and stop waiting for her to do it, and break up with her."

Katya didn't dare say anything. 

"I thought she was my soulmate."

And she looked at Katya with those lost kitten eyes. Those fucking eyes, Katya thought. They made her want to wrap Alaska up in a blanket and kiss away her boo-boos, because that was what Alaska fucking Thunderfuck did to people without even trying.

"Maybe we have a lot of soulmates," Katya said carefully.

"You don't even believe that," Alaska scoffed. "You think it's all bullshit."

"I do." Katya didn't believe in love, let alone this mystical, made-for-each other shit. "But you believe it. And I know there's another one out there for you, somewhere."

Alaska broke into laughter and a sob at the same time. "You fucking bitch," she said. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me." 

"Okay, that I **really** don't believe," Katya said. 

"Fuck," Alaska said, still sobbing and still laughing. "Do you have ice? I need to do something with," she waved a hand around her face, "this."

"I have frozen peas. Much better for this purpose than ice."

"I'll take it."

xxx

Hours later, after the shows and the tips and the drinks and going to bed alone, Katya woke up to take a piss. As she left her bedroom, she heard deep sobs coming from her couch. She ignored them for the moment and took care of business in the bathroom, to give Alaska some time to compose herself.

But the sobs didn't stop, and Katya still wanted to wrap Alaska in that fucking blanket. She peeked around the corner, and coughed to make her presence known. The dark shape across the room didn't seem to notice her. 

Katya coughed again. "Do you want me to pretend I don't hear that, or?"

The shadow sniffled. "That would be great, thanks."

Back in her room, Katya dug out her earplugs. She lived above a bar, she bought them by the case.

She couldn't bear to hear Alaska's heart breaking.

xxx

Alaska woke up when she heard Katya returning from her usual Dunkin' Donuts run, but she kept her eyes closed until she heard the sound of a to-go cup on the coffee table.

Katya was gone, into her kitchen, when Alaska saw what it was.

"You went to Starbucks for me?"

"I went to Starbucks just for you, bitch," Katya called. "Don't tell anybody."

Alaska took a grateful sip of her tea, not caring that it burned her tongue. "I don't deserve you."

"You don't, but here I am." Katya emerged with napkins, her own iced coffee, and a bag, also from Starbucks. "And I brought cake pops for breakfast."

"You didn't." 

"I did." She sat down on the very edge of the couch cushions, and Alaska scrambled to sit up, crossing her legs.

Katya matched her pose, so they faced each other.

"Thanks," Alaska said.

"Thank me later when you come down from your sugar high," Katya said, holding the bag open so Alaska could get her cake pop.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know. Shut up and eat."

Grinning, Alaska took it out and ate it in two bites, then sucked the sugar off the stick. "Oh, my God," she moaned.

Katya hadn't taken hers out of the bag yet. She was watching Alaska with a delicate, sympathetic smile.

Alaska took the lid off her tea and blew on it. "I'm going to do it," she said, as lightly as she could. "I have the balls, and I'm going to do it."

"Okay," Katya said.

"You don't believe me?"

"You don't need me to believe you," Katya said. "You need you to believe you."

"I believe me," Alaska said. "I think. If you're not going to eat that, can I have it?"

"Fuck off, no, you can't have it. I'm a growing girl, I need a hearty breakfast."

"Can I pay you back for the cake pops?" Alaska asked with a smirk.

"Only if it's out of my tip money."

"Fuck," Alaska said.

xxx

It took weeks to really work up those balls. Eventually, Alaska decided it had to be done in person, which, frankly, sucked.

She made sure she was at home when Sharon texted to say she'd landed, and she was still at home when Sharon got there. 

It was almost Christmas. Alaska hadn't put up their tree.

"Hey, you," Sharon said, dropping all of her luggage in the middle of the room. She greeted Alaska with a kiss that could have made anybody drunk, and Alaska kissed her back because it used to be so comforting, that kiss.

It wasn't comforting, not anymore.

Sharon tried to steer her to the bedroom.

Then she noticed Alaska's suitcase, by the front door.

"What's this? Another gig?" But Alaska could tell she was angry, and Alaska didn't blame her. "Good for you," Sharon said.

"It's not a gig." Breathing deep, Alaska closed her eyes and said, "I have to show you something."

She held out her phone, the app already open.

"Unlike you, I don't need photographic evidence," Sharon said.

"Just watch it, okay?" She was still holding the phone out between them.

With a skeptical look, Sharon took it, and pressed play.

"What's this? Are you doing porn now? Did you make a fucking sex tape, because that's-"

Her jaw hardened, and Alaska's heart pounded.

"Where the fuck is that?" Sharon asked.

"It's right where you think it is." 

Sharon looked up at her. "You--you fucked-"

"In our bed, yes."

"Why did you- Why the fuck are you showing me this?"

"I'm sorry," Alaska said, blinking fast. "I'm showing it to you because I don't like the person I am right now, and this-" She jabbed a finger at the phone. "This is that person. And I have to be honest with you, before I go."

"Go?" 

"I'm moving out."

"No, you're fucking not."

"I'm sorry, Aaron. It's over."

Sharon's eyes were hard, cruel, and filling with tears. "Where did you dig up **those** cojones?"

Alaska chuckled sadly. "Yeah, there's been some discussion on that. But I'm going. One of us has to."

"So you throw this at me, and then you just walk away?" She jerked the phone at Alaska, and Alaska took it out of her hand.

"We're not good for each other like this," Alaska said. 

"No fucking shit, we're not good for each other."

"All we do is hurt each other, and I don't want to hurt you anymore."

"So what is this? One last slug for the road?"

Sighing, trying to slow her racing pulse, Alaska said, "I'm sorry. It felt wrong to leave without telling you." She had to look away, so she took a few steps towards the door, hand already out to grasp the handle on her suitcase.

"No," Sharon said, following her. "No. Fuck you. We are going to fight this out."

And she tackled Alaska to the floor.

"Fine," Alaska said calmly, though her head spun. "Hit me. I deserve it."

Sharon rolled off her and covered her face with one hand. "Fuck."

"I still love you," Alaska said, and finally the tears came. "But I have to go. I'm sorry."

" **Fuck** ," Sharon said again. She was full-on crying, too, now. 

Alaska sat up, kissed Sharon on the forehead, and left.

She got a text as she walked into a hotel she couldn't afford.

"I have another fucking boyfriend just so you know. At least I had the decency not to fuck him in our bed."

Alaska turned her phone off, checked in, and cried for two days.

xxx

On the third day, she turned on the phone and called her mom, who'd left increasingly frantic voicemails because Sharon had apparently called there looking for her. She called her sister. She texted her best friend from college so he'd know she was alive, barely. And then she called Katya.

"You did it, didn't you?" Katya asked. She'd left a couple frantic voicemails, too.

"I did it. I'm a mess."

"I don't know if I should say I'm sorry, or congratulations."

"Both?"

"That works. How much of a mess are you?"

Alaska sighed, and remembered, suddenly, that she'd once said Katya made her feel like less of a mess. It was still true. "I'll be okay," she said. "I was going up to my mom's for Christmas anyway, though I usually take Aaron with me."

"Awkward questions?"

"Maybe a few. Half of my relatives are still convinced we're just best friends. They can't handle me being a degenerate crossdresser."

"Some of my best friends are degenerate crossdressers."

"All of your friends are degenerate crossdressers," Alaska said. 

"You've got me there."

"What about you? Still going to your parents' for Christmas?"

"Yes, but I get awkward questions of a different kind. Are you happy, Brian? When's your next show, Brian? Why don't you have a boyfriend, Brian? And the classic, I know a homosexual at the gym! I'll set you up!"

"The burden of a family who loves the hell out of you," Alaska said dryly.

"No kidding."

"You should have a boyfriend, though," Alaska said sincerely. "I don't understand why nobody's made an honest woman out of you yet."

"Oh, fuck off," Katya deflected, and changed the subject. "Is it condescending to say I'm proud of you?"

"It is, but I'll take it," Alaska said. "Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar."


	4. 2013

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Sharon Needles.

It was tough, watching herself on TV. Alaska never wanted it to be tough. And then it was amazing at the same time.

She was on a high from all the attention. She'd gotten tens of thousands of followers before the first episode aired. 

But she was also watching herself gush about a relationship that had just ended badly. She looked so fake, on TV, acting bubbly in love, when in reality the end had already been inevitable. She'd hoped, then, that everything would be magically different, if she just pretended hard enough. Fake it 'til you make it, gurl.

So fucking naive. She already felt ten years older than that child on her screen.

But the edit was very kind to her, so far, and she couldn't wait to see the rest. Last season, she and Sharon had watched everything at their home bar, from very different vantage points. This season, she got calls for viewing parties during the first episode. Take that, Sharon, the still-bitter part of her said.

The call she didn't get, either during or after the first episode, left a big hole in her night. 

Katya had disappeared. Katya hadn't texted or called for more than two weeks before the premiere, but Alaska had been too excited to notice. 

It was Alaska's turn to leave increasingly frantic voicemails.

Katya finally called right after the second episode aired. 

Alaska was at a club in Chicago, and she went out back to answer, though she was supposed to be up on stage for a Q&A. "Where the fuck have you been?" 

"Rehab," Katya said plainly.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry. Is that good?"

"Too soon to tell."

"Are you okay?" Alaska asked. She put a finger in her other ear to block the sound from inside. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Well, you know how they say a panic attack feels like a heart attack? I had one of those."

"I'm so sorry." Alaska felt awful for jumping on her, but also, somehow, pettily vindicated for having known something was seriously wrong.

"And my manager called an ambulance, and now I owe the ambulance company a thousand dollars because my insurance sucks, but I'm also the proud owner of a 14-day chip."

"That's great!" Alaska said. "I mean, I'm sorry about the thousand dollars, but that's great! How do you feel?"

"Confused. Tired. Overly light sensitive. The psych ward was dark as fuck." 

Katya's voice was brittle, and Alaska, for once, was going to be the good friend.

"Can I say I'm proud of you?"

"You can absolutely say that, thanks."

"I'm going clean, too," Alaska said.

Katya's response sounded more skeptical than happy. "You are?"

"Not a sip or a line since I broke up with Sharon."

"Sure, that'll last," Katya said with a bitter chuckle.

"You don't think I can do it?"

"A breakup and getting sober at the same time? I don't think anyone could do it. Even you."

"I'll take that bet. Five dollars?"

"I am an expert, you know. I have tried six different times to get sober since I met you."

"Six?" Alaska asked. "You never talked about that."

"I don't like to talk about it," Katya said. "It's humiliating when I relapse."

"Maybe," Alaska said carefully, "that's why you relapse. Giving yourself permission to fail."

"That's what my sponsor said. I didn't believe them and I don't believe you."

Alaska couldn't tell if she was joking.

"Well," she said. "Whether this one sticks or not, I'm proud of you, either way."

"We'll see," Katya said, back to deflecting. "But now you have got to tell me why you can't swim when you grew up on a lake that's as big as my home state, and whether Jinkx really lost her contacts in that swimming pool."

xxx

Katya disappeared again a couple weeks after that phone call. When she returned, thankfully only a few days later, she announced sadly that she'd been in rehab again. 

"I saw an old dealer on the street and I couldn't help myself," she said. 

It was infuriating that Katya hadn't let her know, **again** , but Alaska wouldn't say it. "Is 'I'm sorry' appropriate?"

"Well, **I'm** sorry, but at least I hated myself the whole time. I think that's a step in the right direction."

Alaska laughed only because she sensed Katya expected her to. "When don't you hate yourself?"

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Alaska panicked. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"Yes, you did," Katya said, but she said it like responding to a read, not serious. "It's a good question. I think I might have just had a breakthrough."

"Do I get to be the therapist now?" Alaska teased.

"I don't think you're qualified, but sure. You still on the straight and narrow?"

"Yes, I am!" She was proud of herself, but she was more worried for Katya. She felt like she'd been worried about Katya forever. Maybe her brain needed something other than the show to obsess over, or maybe she was just growing up, finally. "Are you doing okay otherwise?"

"Fine," Katya said. Alaska heard her moving around, walking and probably packing her backpack. "I need to go to a meeting. There's one downtown in 20 minutes. Do you mind?"

"Of course I don't mind," Alaska said, though she really wanted to talk longer. "Good luck!"

She'd had an invitation for a viewing party in Boston, in April. She'd had offers from bigger and better-paying clubs, too. But she wanted to see Katya, and she didn't even put her phone down before calling Katya's boss, to say yes.

xxx

By April, Katya was on an upswing. She sounded great on the phone--clear, clever, and thoughtful, and pleased with herself.

She was waiting for Alaska at baggage claim.

"What's this?" Alaska asked. She was thrilled to see that Katya looked as good as she sounded. "Full service?"

"Nope," Katya said. "You're paying for the Uber."

Alaska grinned, truly pleased, and opened the app.

xxx

It was Katya who got to interview her after the episode aired, and Katya sober on stage was just as quick as Katya high on stage. She actually weaved through topics a bit faster, but that might have been excitement. In Alaska's mind, sobriety and excitement were now linked. 

The crowd loved them both. Alaska happily signed autographs and posed for pictures while keeping an eye on Katya, who blew off three different guys who showed interest. When the line was suddenly gone--possibly because two of Katya's friends were on stage imitating Coco and Alyssa's lip sync to Cold Hearted Snake--she went upstairs with Katya, and they stayed up most of the night having fantastic sex.

They flip-flopped, twice. They showered so they could eat each other out. They dozed, and woke up, and talked for a while like old friends, and jerked each other off. They laughed and played and teased, and finally, after one last, dry orgasm that was all she had left, Alaska fell onto her back, exhausted.

"Wow," she said, the biggest afterglow cliche ever.

"Yeah." Katya was on her back, too, but her feet were by Alaska's head. "Wow."

"I have been fucking a lot of guys lately, but that was. Wow."

"Well, I **am** a professional." 

Alaska laughed at the old joke, and kicked Katya's shoulder lightly. "You've been a professional as long as I've known you, and **that's** never happened before."

"Ah, but I've never fucked a TV star before."

"That's true," Alaska said.

Katya kicked her in the arm, and then shuffled to the side, putting some space between them. "Sober sex," she said. Most of her body was still red. "Who knew."

"Not me," Alaska said. "Jesus. I want to pass out, but I've got a plane to catch." She shoved herself upright and onto her feet. "You coming to the airport this time?"

"Fuck no. I **am** going to pass out."

"You deserve it," Alaska teased.

"If you try to pay me, I'll kill you."

"Sorry, I spent all my cash on tips last night."

Katya groaned and laughed at the same time. "Fuck off and get out of my house, Miss Thunderfun."

"See you later, Miss Zamolodchikova."

As Alaska left the room, Katya called after her, "I'll see you on TV first!"

xxx

Katya stayed in bed, after Alaska left. Katya stayed in bed for hours. She didn't care that her bladder was ready to burst.

That had been raw, and real, and honey-sweet and hot as hell, and it had been with Alaska fucking Thunderfuck. Of course it had.

Katya felt like an exposed nerve, and she felt every emotion she could name, simultaneously. She felt more, and more strongly, than she'd ever wanted to feel, and she wanted to go out and track down a dealer right that minute.

She didn't. She slunk out of bed, slunk into the shower, and slunk to a meeting. 

**Then** she went out and tracked down a dealer.

She called the ambulance herself, this time.

xxx

Alaska was pissed, when Katya finally managed to call her, and Katya did not need that.

"It's not like I planned it," she said defensively. "Another week in rehab was not in my schedule." 

"But you were doing so well when I saw you," Alaska said. It was almost a whine. It was how she talked when she didn't get something she wanted.

Katya clenched her teeth and said, "Don't you dare be disappointed in me."

"I'm not disappointed **in** you, I'm disappointed **for** you. I'm really sorry."

That was fair, Katya thought, though she wasn't going to admit it aloud. Katya was disappointed both in and for herself. "I'm sorry, too," she said. "One of the shrinks on the inside told me I should apologize to myself for all the fuckups."

"They did not say 'fuckups.'" 

"No, they said something professional that I immediately ignored in favor of calling them fuckups."

"Did I fuck up?" Alaska asked quietly.

"I don't know, did you?" Katya asked, confused.

"When I was there for the viewing party. Did I do something wrong? You must have gone into rehab the next day or something, right?"

Sober Alaska could do math, damn her.

"You think too highly of yourself, ma'am," Katya said, "which is a new and shocking development."

Alaska laughed dully. "Sorry. I forgot for a minute that we are no longer all about me."

We're not? Katya thought. But she wanted to chew over that before she said it, so she pulled up a generic, "This shit is hard."

"I know."

"You don't know," Katya said, laughing a little. "You woke up one day and said, 'I'm going to be a whole new me,' and then you had the nerve to fucking do it, you bitch."

"That's not how it went!"

"I know. You just don't seem to be struggling with it. At all." Katya was impressed, and envious, and turned on, by how Alaska had just flipped a switch.

"I am fueled by spite," Alaska said. "Your problem is that you don't hate anyone."

"Spite?"

"For Sharon," Alaska explained. "I don't need Sharon, and I don't need the shit we used to do together, damn it."

"A questionable tactic, psychologically," Katya said. "But it seems to be working for you. Just don't forgive her, you might get into trouble."

"I don't plan on it."

"Perfect."

xxx

Katya invited a couple of friends along for the crowning in New York.

She'd had one more brief stint in rehab, and she'd emerged feeling pretty confident that this was the one. Failure could go fuck itself. She was done failing.

But she didn't feel up to going down there alone yet, hence the company. She'd chosen the only two friends she had who could keep a promise not to drink that night, so she wouldn't be tempted.

The friends were excited, but they pretended not to be, because "Those Drag Race girls have such big heads."

"You'd kill for a head that big," Katya said.

"Only if it was in my ass!"

Even so, they claimed to be devastated when Alaska didn't win.

"You don't even like her, you bitches!" Katya laughed.

"I don't dislike her," one friend said. "I'm just jealous as fuck."

"Back to jealousy tomorrow," the other friend said. 

Katya said, "Of course. Tomorrow," and bought them more soda.

Jinkx was, as Alaska had promised, both gorgeous and insanely talented on stage. Roxxxy was as gracious as a pageant runner-up should be.

Alaska was a fucking mess.

Katya watched with increasingly raised eyebrows, along with equal measures of amusement and dismay, as Alaska threw an entire tantrum on stage. 

"No more jealousy," said the friend on Katya's right, and "That is not cute," said the friend on her left.

At least the audience seemed entertained. If there was one thing Alaska knew how to do, besides perfectly sucking Katya's dick, it was how to grab attention.

That spark. That fucking spark, even now, drawing in all the eyes in the room, but especially Katya's.

Alaska's mom came on stage to try to calm her down, and Alaska only played it up more.

Katya knew she was faking, at least in part. Alaska had been saying all along that Jinkx was going to win. But it was, as Katya's friend had said, not cute, and it made the hairs on the back of Katya's neck stand up. 

And then there was the drink in Alaska's hand. Katya was pretty sure it was part of the act--Alaska's eyes were clear and clever, and Katya could see a tiny curve at one corner of her lips. But even seeing her pretend to drink was scary.

After Alaska was finally dragged offstage--literally dragged offstage--Katya continued to stare at the curtain, hoping there would be no encore. Alaska had told her to come say hi backstage, but that didn't seem like a good idea anymore.

"So glad you roped us into this shitshow, Katya."

"That was not how I thought it would turn out," Katya admitted.

"Nice whiny brat of a girlfriend you've got there."

"Oh, shut up," Katya said lightly. "She will happily admit she's a whiny brat." 

"Come on, we can still make the late bus if we take a cab. And you're paying."

"Someday," Katya said, "you are going to say, 'I was there when.' And of course I'm paying. You guys deserve a refund on those tickets you also didn't pay for."

xxx

Alaska texted a few hours later. "You still in town?"

"Risking life and limb on the Chinatown bus as we speak," Katya responded. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you. Why? You okay?"

"I cried."

"I saw. That was some performance."

"No, backstage." Alaska wrote four texts in quick succession, and it was a lot of words at once, for Alaska. "Ru announced the winner, and Roxxxy turned right away and hugged her and said congratulations. And I just sank into that filthy couch and scream-cried."

"I'm sure you were really worked up," Katya replied. She knew how much pressure Alaska had been under--from friends and family who were sure she'd win, and from herself as a perfectionist who always wanted to win even when she was sure she wouldn't.

"Of course I was worked up. You know me. And then even my mother thought all that shit on stage was real."

"Aha! I knew you were faking!"

"Jinkx knows, too, thank God," Alaska said. "I don't want her to think I'm a complete asshole."

"Just an incomplete asshole. Your mom still there?"

"Asleep on the other bed. She wouldn't leave me alone, poor thing. I scared the crap out of her."

"I did not quite have the crap scared out of me," Katya wrote, "but it was close."

"You said you knew it was fake!"

Mostly fake, Katya repeated in her own head. "No," she typed, "I just had to take a shit and I didn't have time before we got on this deathtrap, and I'm dying." 

Alaska sent a lot of Ha!s.

Katya hesitated before asking, "The drink was fake, too, right?"

"Of course it was. I still hate Sharon. I probably shouldn't call while you're on the bus?"

"Probably not. You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I just can't sleep."

"No surprise." Katya knew she wouldn't be able to sleep, either, when she got home.

"So I'm sitting here thinking about why I worked myself up so much."

"Pressure!" Katya typed. "Catharsis! Everybody thought you were just down on yourself when you told them you weren't going to win."

There was a pause before Alaska's reply. "You didn't think that. You believed me."

"But I know for a fact that you're as up on yourself as you've ever been. And if anyone knew how it was going to go down, it was the show's biggest fan. You."

There was another, longer pause. Katya was about to put her phone away, figuring Alaska had fallen asleep.

"Thanks," Alaska wrote. "That means a lot."

"From me?" Katya asked reflexively. "Nothing I say means a damn thing.

"Maybe to you. To me it means a lot."

Katya considered her next text very carefully and finally typed, "I don't know what to say to that."

"You don't have to say anything. But maybe we should work on getting you to accept compliments."

"Never," Katya said. 

Alaska sent an eye roll emoji. "Anyway. I'm glad you were there to witness the carnage and see through me. Thanks."

"Thanks for the invite. My friends hate you even more now, btw."

"Just what I always wanted. You're still a good friend, Brian."

"Sober Justin is a pretty good friend, too," Katya wrote.

Alaska sent back some more Ha!s, and signed off.

Katya stared at the phone in her hand until the light started to hurt her eyes, and the drunk stranger next to her said, "Shut that thing off before I pound you. Some of us are trying to sleep!"

Joke's on you, Katya thought as she slid the phone into her pocket. They'd just passed the last exit, and they'd be there in ten minutes.

xxx

"What do you mean, you won't have us over?" Detox asked. "Whose floor are you sleeping on right now?"

Alaska had had enough of Pennsylvania winters, enough of hearing "you were robbed" from all her friends, and enough of running into her ex in the grocery store at three o'clock in the morning. So she'd packed up her clothes and her drag a week after the finale, moved in with Detox for a while, and found herself a little, furnished walk-up in Weho. The building was going to be dust when the big one came, but the apartment had two bedrooms, which was all a starving drag queen ever dreamed of. 

"If you get evicted and need a place to stay, you're welcome to my sofa," Alaska told her. "But right now that sofa is white and pristine and I don't trust any of you whores not to ruin it."

"Fair enough," Detox said. "I'll be there as soon as **you** ruin the sofa."

Detox got a tour on facetime instead, the day Alaska moved in, and she pronounced it acceptable. 

Alaska proceeded to facetime almost everyone she knew.

Her brother said he was thinking of moving to LA and asked if he could stay with her.

Her mother said it looked like a safe neighborhood, after Alaska gave her a view from the small balcony where she planned to laze like a cat in the sun and finally burn off those Pennsylvania winters.

Raja cooed over how the little baby queen who'd once worn her hand-me-downs was all grown up now.

Alaska's Pittsburgh friends were jealous and dropped hints about visiting, but Alaska didn't trust any of them with her new sofa, either.

Most of her theater friends from college actually could be trusted with the sofa, so she told them they could stay when they came out for auditions.

Katya didn't ask about visiting. Katya asked about cockroaches.

"None yet!" Alaska said.

"Nightclub downstairs?"

"Four blocks away."

"Close enough to stumble home from," Katya said. "Far enough not to keep you awake. Okay, it's perfect and I officially hate you."

Alaska grinned at her. "You don't hate anybody. We've discussed this."

"Sadly true." Katya was sitting out on her fire escape, the sun glinting off her hair, and she looked **good**. 

The rumble of lust that coursed through Alaska's body surprised her. She didn't usually think about Katya that way until they were in the same room. She must be desperate; the only dick she'd seen while staying with Detox was her own.

"What?" Katya said. "What's that look?"

"Nothing. Just a sudden burst of homesickness."

"You're only saying that because it's summer. In December you'll be singing a different tune."

"And you can say I told you so."

"Which I already planned to do, but I appreciate the permission. All I ask is that when you become the Hollywood starlet you were always meant to be- "

"Oh, my God," Alaska said.

"-you remember me in your acceptance speech at the Oscars. You don't have to thank me. Just remember that drug-addled whore you used to know in Boston."

"I promise I will still know that formerly drug-addled whore when I get my Oscar."

"Please," Katya said. "You'll be able to afford much higher quality friends **and** you'll have your own therapist." 

"You are so full of shit," Alaska said.

Katya cackled and waved her hand around, giving Alaska a dizzying view of her neighborhood. But when Katya finally focused on the phone again, there was something in her eyes that Alaska couldn't parse. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Alaska asked. 

"I'm **great** ," Katya said. "I had a $500 trick last night, mama."

"You're charging $500 now?"

"I would charge you $5,000. No, I charged him $200 and he left a $300 tip."

"Just cashed his social security check?" Alaska teased.

"Just came out to his fiancee and broke up with her," Katya said. "He said it was from their honeymoon fund."

"Aw," Alaska said. "You're somebody's honeymoon!"

"Only way I'm going to get one!"

Alaska doubted that, but she didn't get a chance to say so. "Shit," she said, checking the incoming call. "It's my agent. I have to take it."

"Oh, she has an **agent** now," Katya said.

Katya knew Alaska had an agent. Katya knew all about Alaska's agent. 

"Fuck off and I'll talk to you soon," Alaska said, and answered the call.

xxx

Sometime before sunrise, Alaska texted Katya. Katya blinked at the notification while she lit her first cigarette of the day, trying to figure out why Alaska had still been awake at that hour. Then she remembered: three hours behind.

"It's weird that you're so far away," the text said.

Apparently they were now brain twins. 

"Pittsburgh's not exactly next door," Katya typed.

"It's in the same time zone," Alaska replied immediately.

Speaking of. "Why are you awake? Have you slept at all?" Katya asked.

"Not really. I tossed and turned until the sheets were in a ball around my feet."

Katya had facts at the ready. "I read somewhere that when you sleep in a new place, only half of your brain shuts off. The other half is on watch all night."

"That's dolphins," Alaska wrote.

"No, humans too! So half your brain was waiting for the axe murderer to show up, and the other half was dreaming about tofu jerky or something."

"Now I'll be dreaming about the axe murderer, so thanks for that." 

"Or you have a ghost," Katya added. "That's the other option."

"What I had," Alaska wrote, "was the dullest hookup ever, and it made me miss my favorite hookup."

Katya read that a few times and typed, "I'm not sure favorite hookup is a title I want to win."

"Favorite fuckbuddy?"

"I guess that's better."

"Then what title do you want?"

There were a lot of potential answers to that, and some of them were even true. Katya settled on, "Miss Vladivostok 1957."

"I don't have the authority to hand that one out, sorry," Alaska wrote.

"Dramatic sigh," Katya typed. "I shall persist bravely anyway. Should I expect you to show up at my door with cash and a boner tomorrow night?"

"Boston in August!" 

Katya already knew that. "You sure you can wait that long wink wink nudge nudge?"

"I shall persist bravely," Alaska replied.

xxx

"So," Katya teased on the phone in July. "How many guys this week?"

"Not nearly enough," Alaska said. She spoke softly, in case any of the girls were asleep.

"Still trying to fuck Needles out of your system?"

"Hey, I can't help it if all these condom companies want to send me free samples."

"You'd be a perfect spokesmodel," Katya said. "You already love swinging your dick around on TV."

"I did that **once**. Just don't ask me how many times I've done it on stage."

"I have **seen** you do it onstage."

"You're just shy," Alaska told her.

Katya laughed, and Alaska smiled, alone in her little, darkened bunk. 

"Why not enough?" Katya asked. "You said there were twinks lining up for you!"

"Unfortunately," Alaska said, "a tour bus is not conducive to a proper social life. No matter how many twinks there are." 

On the bus, they all had an unspoken agreement not to comment on what went on behind the curtains. But Willam didn't give a shit about the agreement, and she said, too loudly, "Tell me about it." Alaska ignored her.

"I can see how that would pose a problem," Katya said. "I'm sorry to say I don't feel your pain."

In the beginning, in January, right after breaking up with Sharon, Alaska had tried boyfriend after boyfriend, all of them gone faster than Katya's stints in rehab. Now, almost a month into the tour where she was finally one of the stars, she was going the easy, slutty route. Fame was, indeed, conveniently timed to fuck Sharon out of her system. Even with Sharon just a few bunks down.

And she really was getting the free condom samples.

"Enough about my lack of conquests," Alaska said to Katya. "How are you doing?"

"Oh," Katya said. "One of my tricks is trying to romance me."

"Is he hot?"

"Yes, but that's beside the point. He's a 62-year-old grandfather and I am a 21-year-old woman."

Alaska laughed, but then said, "Why do you always tell me trick stories?"

"Trick stories?" Willam asked. "Who has trick stories?" 

"Hey, I have the stories I have," Katya said evenly.

"You don't have to have stories. Just tell me about you."

"Sober!" Katya said. "Sixty day chip!"

"I know, you sent me a picture. Outside of that."

"You don't want to hear about my life, believe me."

"Is this some weird distancing thing? Did you have an emotionally unavailable father or something?"

"No, it's me who's emotionally unavailable."

"For fuck's sake," Alaska said.

"Okay," Katya said slowly. "Well. Last week I had an infection that we don't discuss in polite company- "

"I am not polite company!" Alaska said, laughing.

"-and it severely curtailed my income."

"I'm sorry," Alaska said. "That sucks."

"There was no sucking. That's the point."

"Oh, my God, stop."

"The price of crystal meth has gone up," Katya said, "but the price of box wine has gone down."

"That's not even funny," Alaska said.

"I was getting to that. Thankfully, I am no longer purchasing either of those substances, which helped with the income curtailment."

Alaska was exasperated. "Real life," she said, ashamed that she'd never asked this before, when Katya had become so important to her. " **Your** real life."

"The trick stories are real!"

"Fuck this, I'm hanging up."

"No! Um, I don't know. I've been really good at going to yoga this week?"

"You do yoga?"

"Of course I do yoga! I've been doing yoga for a fucking decade. Where do you think all this zen comes from?"

"I never knew that. I only knew about the ka-ra-tay."

"Yes, well. I never did learn much ka-ra-tay, but I'm a rockstar at yoga."

"That's," Alaska said. Her eyes were burning for some dumbass reason. "Thank you for telling me."

"Thank you for-" Katya started. Then she tried again. "Don't take this the wrong way, but-"

"But I've been a narcissistic asshole for as long as we've known each other?"

"And that's what makes you so irresistible to me."

"Every girl on this bus is a narcissistic asshole," Willam said.

"Willam, put your fucking headphones in like a decent human being," Alaska said. Then she said, to Katya, "So it is a weird distancing thing!" 

"Something like that," Katya said. It sounded a bit strange, but Alaska decided she was ready to let Katya off the hook for now. She'd just have to remember to ask next time. And the time after that, to make up for all the times she hadn't. 

Willam said, "I'm a narcissistic asshole who knows every conversation is secretly about me and I’ll listen if I want to."

"Ignore Willam," Alaska told Katya. "He's just mad because I like your trick stories better than his."

"Does the price for hooking go up once you're on TV?" Katya asked thoughtfully. "Does it skyrocket like your booking fee?"

"That's just something you're going to have to find out for yourself," Alaska said.

"I can't believe you won't even do basic research for me now that you're a superstar."

"When **you're** a superstar," Alaska said, "you can tell me."

xxx

Sober Justin, Katya thought after they'd said their goodbyes, was a lot more insightful than she'd ever suspected, and that wasn't necessarily good.

xxx

"So here's the thing," Alaska texted a couple weeks before her tour stop in Boston.

Katya was at her retail job, sitting bored behind the cash register, and her day brightened at this new distraction. But she knew a hookup request was next, and that was trouble. They'd been talking and texting a lot, but they hadn't seen one another in person since April. The season 5 crowning didn't count.

When the text she expected didn't come, she eventually replied, "?"

"Yeah," Alaska texted. "So you know how I'm fucking everything that moves right now?"

"You might have mentioned it, yes."

"I think we both know I'm going to regret this someday."

Katya typed, "No comment," and Alaska replied with a wink.

"So, the everything category doesn't include you, okay?"

Puzzled, Katya responded with another "?"

"No fucking," Alaska replied. "No fucking you."

"Everything but me. Okay." When she read it back it sounded like she was offended. She wasn't. 

"No, not like that. No fucking you because you're not just trade, and I don't want to regret you."

A customer entered, and Katya typed "brb" before helping them out for ten minutes. When she picked up her phone again, Alaska hadn't said anything else, and Katya could picture her waiting on the other end. So she asked, "You don't regret fucking me?"

"STFU of course I don't."

"Everyone else does," Katya replied.

"Tell that to all of your return customers."

"Pffft. They don't count. No fucking this time, right."

"We can still hang out though!"

"If you want."

"Of course I want," Alaska texted. "Why else would I ask?" 

"Pity?"

"Will you fucking stop that? Putting yourself down like that!"

"Absolutely not."

The phone rang in Katya's hand. Strangely enough, it was Alaska.

"You're driving me crazy," Alaska said.

"I **am** crazy," Katya said, laughing. "I'm pretty sure you know this about me."

Alaska wisely ignored her. "I'm staying at the hotel with the rest of the girls, but my spare time is yours. You can show me some more culture."

"I repeat the invitation to get up close and personal with my shower curtain."

"Nope. Not good enough. I won't be in your bathtub. Or your apartment."

"Because everyone who walks through the door fucks me, and we're not doing that," Katya said.

"Exactly! So I'll see you then?"

"You will see my hands and my face but not my impressive pecs or my gargantuan dick."

"I'm glad we understand each other," Alaska said.

xxx

Alaska got to the hotel and showered and called Katya, who was just waking up and happy to brag about it, and they agreed to meet at the subway station up the street. 

"Wow, you look great," Alaska said as she gave Katya a quick hug. "Really healthy."

They were still above ground, at the edge of a park, with office workers and shoppers and tourists all milling around on a bright, hot, perfect day. A bell rang from a white church with a steeple, very New England.

Katya grinned, and preened, and took off her cheap sunglasses, and spoke over the bell and the summer wind. "I know, right?" 

Alaska laughed at her. "You never did look like a methhead, but your skin looks fantastic."

"It's a lot easier to take care of when you're not falling down drunk every night. And I got a Groupon for a facial."

"I've been paying full price for facials and I don't look that good."

"No, you don't," Katya said, still grinning. "But I like you anyway."

"And I'm incredibly grateful," Alaska said. "Where are we going?"

Katya started leading her down the stairs and said, "You'll see. I got another Groupon!"

 _You'll see_ turned out to be a museum right on the water, in a part of town Alaska had never been to before. It looked very new.

They wandered through the galleries, Katya happily exclaiming over her favorites in the current exhibition. This was a place Katya visited often, a place that was important for her and where she felt fully at home, and Alaska was captivated by both the art, and Katya's mood. 

"Did you do this in school?" Alaska asked, after a while. 

Katya pointed to the nearest piece. "That?"

"Material art. Painting? Sculpture?"

"About as much sculpture as any drag queen could manage in her sleep," Katya said. "A lot of drawing." She leaned in, held a hand to her mouth, and whispered, "So many naked women. Shhh."

Alaska laughed outright. "I'm sure that was a terrible hardship."

"At least I didn't get a boner like most of the guys in class."

"No naked men?"

"I did get a boner those times. Then you get sick of it and you don't care anymore, you know?"

"Hair," Alaska said.

"Hairy penises?"

A docent walked past and stifled a laugh. "Most of them are from my college," Katya whispered. 

"Not penises," Alaska said. "Hair the musical. By the end of the run you don't even notice you're all naked."

"That why you helicoptered your dick around on camera at the first opportunity?"

"That," Alaska said, "was just the exuberance of youth."

"I don't think I've ever been that exuberant," Katya teased.

"You will be someday. One of these years you'll get the call."

"And I'll proudly show America my wiener?"

"Or your asshole. Mark my words. Oh, wow, that's **gorgeous**."

They'd walked into a glass observation deck with a huge view, overwhelmingly blue from the sky and the water.

Katya gestured to the right. "I think the only place you know here is the airport."

"Tea," Alaska said, laughing. "I don't do landscapes, but if I lived here, I'd definitely want to sketch this."

"We can do that."

"What?"

"Museum store," Katya said.

"Is it allowed?"

"As long as you use pencil. You want to stay here while I go buy something?"

"No way," Alaska said. "I am definitely paying for this and you can't stop me."

They settled on some little, handmade paper notebooks and a box of museum branded color pencils, and sat on the floor by the windows, drawing the skyscrapers and ferries and tall ships and construction cranes. 

Eventually Katya got bored and made a caricature of Alaska. Alaska laughed and started a caricature of Katya.

Museum visitors came and went, some looking over their shoulders, some ignoring them completely. An older man asked if they were students and Katya said, "Close. Drag queens." The man nodded sagely and kept walking.

"Eternal students in the school of life and crossdressing," Alaska said.

A docent walked through, and they peppered her with questions about her major and her favorite exhibit and her favorite works. Then they went and sketched those, teasing one another and exchanging notebooks to add more pages.

Another docent warned them the museum was closing in half an hour, and then did a double take. "Are you Alaska from Drag Race?" 

"She most definitely is!" Katya said proudly.

Alaska greeted the girl warmly and smiled for a selfie, and then looked at her phone to confirm the time. She had a dozen missed texts and two missed calls; she had to be on stage in four hours.

"I had no idea it was that late!" she said to Katya.

"Welcome to my world. I'm about to wet my pants and I didn't even notice."

Katya wouldn't let Alaska buy her anything else at the store, but Alaska quietly snapped a photo of a book Katya couldn't stop exclaiming over. She planned to buy it on the website later, and probably buy her a t-shirt, too. 

She didn't know when she'd give them to Katya--they weren't really gift-giving friends--but she was sure an occasion would arise, someday.

xxx

The afternoon had cooled off, and Alaska had spent too much time on buses and airplanes lately to want to be cooped up on public transit during rush hour. They walked over a bridge and back downtown.

"I'm sorry they didn't cast you again," Alaska said as they walked through a long, narrow park. "Ru's nuts if she doesn't see you're a star yet."

Katya gasped. "Did you just say something negative about Miss RuPaul Andre Charles?"

"I guess I did," Alaska said, laughing at herself. But she felt strongly about this. Katya was as talented as any queen who'd been on the show. She might have been weirder than any of them, but weird made for great TV. Alaska truly didn't understand why none of the producers could see that.

Maybe she'd offer to help Katya with her audition tape, next year.

"I don't really mind." Katya shrugged and steered them to the right. "If it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be."

"So that's the zen you were talking about. I've never seen it before."

Katya got herself into a pose right there on the walkway, hands together like a prayer, one foot on the other knee. "Om," she said. "I am a zen fucking master." But she lost her balance, and laughed hysterically at herself for losing her balance, so Alaska didn't feel bad for laughing, too.

"This is why yogis don't wear shoes," Katya said when they'd both calmed down. "Anyway, I'm over it. No more tapes. I'm going to get me a career!"

"You're not going to audition for the next season?"

"Nope! I'm going to grad school! If they accept me, which is questionable."

Alaska was enough of a geek that the thought of going back to school was exhilarating, even if she wasn't the one going. "Good for you!" she said, and she meant it. "In what? Psychology?"

"How did you know that?"

"Well, you **have** been my therapist for three years now. But you told me you were taking psych at community college."

"That's right, I did tell you that," Katya said with a smile.

"Is the class over? Did you get an A?"

"Yes, and yes. So I'm going to apply this fall and I need a reference from a former client." She looked slyly at Alaska. "Would you be willing?"

Alaska laughed. "Of course I would! You're the best therapist I've ever had! Look what a success you've made of me!"

Katya grinned and even blushed a little, though that might have been the sun.

They turned and walked up a street Alaska recognized that was full of foot traffic, and they stopped to buy sandwiches, and then Katya walked Alaska back to the hotel.

"You sure you don't want to come backstage?" 

"Yeah, it would be weird. I'll scream for you in the audience, though."

"I wish you'd- "

"Let you pay for the ticket, I know."

Alaska chuckled ruefully and they stood facing one another on the sidewalk. She felt reluctant to say goodbye, and she thought maybe Katya did, too. 

"You have a face to paint," Katya said, finally, with a half-smile. "Talk to you soon?"

"Soon," Alaska said, and watched her go. Katya looked back and waved before she turned off the street, towards her own apartment. 

xxx

"Where'd you disappear to this afternoon?" Jinkx asked later, when they all met up in the hotel lobby before the show.

"I think I might have been on a date," Alaska said without thinking. Or more precisely, she'd been thinking since Katya had left her on the sidewalk, and she'd forgotten to set the switch back to _career_.

"Are you blacking out again?" Jinkx teased.

"No, just confused. Don't tell-"

Willam slid in between them. "I'm here to help," she said. "Was this someone you think is hot? Do you want to get in his pants?"

"Well, yes, but- "

"Did one of you invite the other?" 

"Kind of, but- "

"Did you fuck?"

"No, but- "

"Stop talking back," Willam said. "Was there hand-holding? Kissing?"

"Absolutely not," Alaska said.

"Then it wasn't a date. Easy."

Alaska rolled her eyes.

Jinkx said, "Willam has all the answers and you shouldn't listen to any of them."

Sharon and Manila joined their little circle, and Sharon asked, "Who's easy?" 

"Alaska!" Willam said. "She went on a date this afternoon."

"I did not!" Alaska said.

"That wasn't a date," Sharon said. "That was her regular Boston trade. They've been fucking for years."

"They didn't fuck this time!" Willam said gleefully.

"You didn't fuck her?" Sharon asked. "Why the hell not?"

"Because," Alaska started. She didn't feel up to explaining why Katya didn't fall into the trade category **or** the date category. "Because I do occasionally enjoy activities with no exposed penises."

"If there are no exposed penises then it's definitely a date," Manila said.

"Oh, my God," Alaska said. 

Thankfully, the van appeared outside then and distracted everyone.

"Well," Jinkx said. "That settles that."

xxx

Katya had set up two tricks ahead of time, for after the show. She figured she should at least earn money while Alaska got lucky. And lucky. And lucky again.

She kind of hoped none of them would be able to get it up.

"You were AMAZING," she texted Alaska as she walked home. "I loved it! So proud of you!"

Alaska's reply, which Katya didn't see until after her first customer left, said, "THANK YOU," and "Going to bed early, too tired for extracurriculars. The museum was fun and I already miss you!"

Katya couldn't decide if that was better or worse than erection-free trade, but she didn't have time to think about it. Her next trick would be there in ten minutes.

She wasn't tempted to find a dealer, though, and she counted that as a win.

xxx

Alaska called too early the next Sunday, but Katya was already up and needed a distraction. It was fucking infernal outside, and too sticky for sleep or anything else. 

"Katya's Porn and Pickles," she said when she answered. "How can I help you today?"

"I have a proposition for you," Alaska said, all business. Katya tried to remember where she was. DC, maybe?

"How dare you ignore that brilliant opening gambit," she said, "and I thought we weren't fucking?"

"Katya's Porn and Pickles is a goldmine, and we're not. Different kind of proposition."

"Then I'm not interested," Katya said. 

"I think you will be." And before Katya could contradict her, Alaska went on, "You know how I have a couple weeks off from tour after we finish this leg?" 

"I am aware of this, yes," Katya said. She fanned herself with her t-shirt as she wandered into the kitchen to open a bottle of iced coffee.

"And I set up a few gigs in the Midwest. I told you that, right?" 

"You did." 

"Well," Alaska said, stretching it out. She sounded very proud of herself, and it made Katya smile. "I talked to the booking managers at some of the clubs, and I asked if I could add a friend to the lineup."

"You what?"

"Three of them said yes! And they're going to pay you!"

Katya peeked out of the kitchen at her air conditioner. It had died at the beginning of the heat wave, and she wouldn't have the money to replace it for a few more days. She said, "I wasn't aware that I had hired you as my agent."

Alaska laughed. "I'm not taking a cut and you can thank me later."

"Explain," Katya said, because it was the only word she could come up with.

"What? It'll be fun! And the entire world needs to see how fabulous you are!"

"I'm quitting next year," Katya said. "You know I'm quitting."

"So the world needs to see you now, before you quit!"

"I," Katya started. "You're insane, you know that, right?"

Alaska laughed again. "I owe you for all the times you've hosted me in Boston. Say yes. You know you want to."

"I," Katya said again. "Hold on a sec." She took a big swig of coffee, walked over to the box fan, and dropped down right in front of it, on the floor. "Just what kind of cut are you not taking?"

"Ten percent would be thirty-five dollars."

"Three hundred and fifty fucking dollars?"

"I'm not doing math today but I talked two of them into $300, and one into $400."

"What the- Did you suck them off or something?"

"I would have, but no."

Katya felt her eyes bugging out. "What do you mean you would have?"

"Just say yes."

"But- Really? You would have?"

"I made sure all the hotel rooms have two beds," Alaska said, talking right over Katya's question. "And I have so many frequent flier miles, you wouldn't believe. They're yours."

Katya never wanted to take money from Alaska, but...it wasn't like Alaska had paid for the miles. Maybe Katya could live with that. "What is wrong with you?" she asked, so she wouldn't have to make a decision yet.

"Say. Yes," Alaska said again.

"I cannot believe I am buying into this lunacy, but-"

"You're coming? You're coming!"

"I am paying for all my food," Katya insisted, "and I'm going to pay you back for those miles someday."

"Suit yourself." Alaska sounded **giddy**. "I'll just put it in a savings account under your name."

"Ugh, you're impossible."

"A good agent finds you work even when you don't want to work."

" **Impossible** ," Katya said again, but she was grinning. 

xxx

Alaska spent a few days visiting family in Pennsylvania before their little mini-tour started. She loved her immediate family, but she'd been roped into lunch with some cousins who were, to put it kindly, less open-minded. So she was happy to escape, and happier that she'd be with queens that night, because drag always made her feel at home. She was happier still about the queen she'd be spending the most time with.

She was sitting at an umbrella table at the Starbucks connected to their hotel. She had an empty cup of tea on the table and her feet on the chair opposite when the hotel's airport courtesy van pulled up. Katya climbed out, iced coffee in hand, and tried to steer two suitcases while also lighting a cigarette. Alaska laughed as she waved her over.

Katya's face lit up, and she managed to get herself and her belongings over to Alaska's table in a few moments, though she tripped on the chain marking off the outdoor seating area.

When Alaska finished laughing at that she said, "Oh my God, I'm so excited!"

Katya took the unlit cigarette out of her mouth to bend down for air kisses. "Hi, honey, I'm here!" she said. Then she plopped down in the chair between Alaska and Alaska's feet and sighed in exhaustion. "I can't smoke here, can I? Fuck."

"I told you to take the nonstop flight," Alaska said.

"It was too early," Katya said in an Alaska-esque whine. "But next time I might take your advice. **Might.** "

"Uh-huh."

"You don't believe me and that's smart, because I lie all the time."

"You don't lie to me!" Alaska said happily.

"Usually."

"What? When did you-"

" **Anyway** ," Katya said. "I know you don't want me to thank you anymore, but thank you."

They'd had this conversation before. They'd had this conversation **yesterday**. "I would have been bored on my own," Alaska said.

Katya slurped ostentatiously on the last of her coffee and pretended to deep-throat the straw. 

"Impressive," Alaska said. She stood to toss both of their cups into the recycling bin a few feet away. "Buy you another one?"

"That was my fifth," Katya confessed. 

"So no, then. Did you have a side of lunch with all that caffeine?"

Katya shook her head. Her eyes were wild, between the coffee and the amount of sugar she always drowned in it. "Breakfast."

"Come on," Alaska said, and offered Katya a hand up. "Let's drop your stuff off upstairs and then find a Chipotle."

"Hey," Katya said, suddenly serious, before she took the hand. "I just want to say again for the record that I can always stay out for a few hours after the show, if you want trade."

They'd had this conversation before, too. Alaska told her to fuck off and pulled her upright anyway. 

xxx

It had been months since they were together on stage. Katya was a little apprehensive, but the show went great. They improvised one number together, and Katya had two of her own. And she tiptoed onto the stage during Alaska's last song to play her shadow, and badly lip-sync while Alaska sang, and pretend to hide when Alaska turned around to look for her. The audience screamed with laughter and she got almost as much in tips as she did at home, on top of the ridiculous amount Alaska had somehow "negotiated" for her. Sweet-talked, more like, Katya assumed. 

"She is **fabulous** ," Nina, one of the longstanding local queens, told Alaska. Then she turned to Katya and said, "You are fabulous!"

They were all three dedragging backstage, along with the other girls. A few of them agreed loudly.

"I told you!" Alaska said as she stripped off the last of her many pairs of pantyhose.

"YouTube doesn't do you justice, gurl," Nina said. 

Katya was so pleased, she stood straight up from where she'd been stepping out of her dress and left it on the floor. "You've seen my videos?" she asked. "Oh, of course you have, Alaska told you."

"No, long before that."

"She's a drag scholar," one of the other local girls said, about Nina.

"Katya's got a problem with self-esteem," Alaska said in a stage whisper. 

"Oh, fuck off," Katya said brightly. She turned to Nina, whom she'd also seen on YouTube and had always admired, and talked to her instead while Alaska grinned smugly in the background. 

They exchanged phones to key in their numbers.

"You girls coming out with us?" one of the queens asked. 

"Not me," Nina said, and to Katya she added, "I'm a mess without my eight hours."

"Sorry, we're both sober." Katya glanced at Alaska to confirm that she wasn't interested. 

Alaska was standing barefoot in only her boy underwear, her head back while she gulped down water. She shook her head minutely without lowering the bottle.

"Unless you want- " Katya started, to Alaska.

"I don't," Alaska said. She looked straight at Katya as she screwed the bottle cap back on. "Shut. Up."

Katya turned back to the girls and said happily, "Off to the hotel for us then."

"Y'all come back now, ya hear?" Nina said, and Katya promised she would.

xxx

"This feels like a slumber party," Katya said. She and Alaska were sitting in lotus position on opposite beds, facing one another. "Can we play Bloody Mary and talk about boys?"

"I don't know," Alaska said coyly. "What boys do you want to talk about?"

"Menudo."

Alaska's brows furrowed as she tried to remember. "Was that the one with Marky Mark or the one with Ricky Martin?"

"Ricky Martin. He's just so **dreamy**." Katya held onto her serious expression for a few moments before cracking them both up.

After taking off makeup and putting on nightclothes--they'd changed in the bathroom by silent agreement--Katya had tried to meditate, and Alaska had tried to follow her example. But Katya still had a lot of energy left and couldn't keep her eyes shut or her mouth closed. Alaska seemed reluctant to stop talking, too.

"Was Ricky your first boy crush?" Alaska asked with a teasing half-smile.

"Not him, the little one. Angelo. Much more age-appropriate." She thought for a minute. "That's the first one I remember. I probably had a crush on Big Bird or something when I was two."

"I had a crush on the nerdy cousin on Fresh Prince."

"Boy bands," Katya proclaimed, "are a million times cooler than TV characters, and at least Angelo turned out to be gay."

"He was gay," Alaska insisted. "He just didn't know it yet!"

"I demand receipts, hunty."

They playfully argued about crushes for a while and moved on to first times, before chatting about what they needed to do in the morning. By then Alaska was in a near-constant yawn and Katya thought she might fall asleep and fall over, like a kitten gif.

"Bedtime for you, kitty," Katya said. 

Alaska nodded, yawning again. 

Katya gave her a few moments to get under the covers. Then she turned off the light and lay down herself.

"We never played Bloody Mary," Alaska murmured.

"Next slumber party," Katya said. "I promise."

xxx

Alaska slipped just barely into consciousness in the middle of the night, only enough to roll onto her other side and find a more comfortable position. But her brain registered, through her eyelids, that the room was light. Curious, she squinted her eyes open.

In the other bed, Katya was sitting up against the pillows, reading a thick book. She had her glasses on and held a pencil between her lips like a cigarette, and she looked completely engrossed. 

As Alaska watched, Katya perked up, took the pencil from her mouth, underlined some new idea, and wrote a note on the page. Katya loved new ideas. She was a font of new ideas herself. She searched them out and sucked them down, and Alaska could tell she really liked this one. Katya hummed a quick, happy tone and started tapping the eraser lightly on the page.

A wisp of fondness made Alaska smile as she shut her eyes and went back to sleep.

In the morning, when they got up to catch their flight, Alaska wouldn't remember. She'd see Katya pack the book and think it reminded her of something good that she couldn't quite catch, like a sweetness lingering on the back of her tongue.

xxx

Louisville was a lot like Columbus, except they had their act down a little better and they both got more tips. Katya spotted Alaska slipping a handful of bills into Katya's backpack, so she made a guess at how many--Alaska's fingers were longer, Alaska's handful was bigger--and slipped them right back.

She wasn't going to get angry about Alaska's money anymore, she'd decided before this trip. She was still going to turn it down, but Alaska meant well, and half her drag was still made up of half-price specials from the dollar store. She didn't need all the money she was making.

Katya slept late and woke up unable to move, with a gnome sitting on her chest. She was used to sleep paralysis and able to stay calm after the initial jolt of panic. The only weird thing was that the gnome spoke in Sharon Needles' voice, saying words Katya couldn't understand.

"You're not really a demon, Needles," Katya told it in her head. "You just play one on TV. Now go away and take your little fiend with you."

The gnome tilted its head in confusion, said a few more words in a new voice, and blinked out of existence. Katya moved her fingers, then her toes, then woke up for real.

"What the fuck," she said. 

"Hmmm?" Alaska asked. 

Alaska was clean, dressed, ready to go, and most surprisingly, she was packing for Katya. One of Katya's suitcases was open on Alaska's bed.

"You don't have to do that," Katya said, yawning, as she sat up.

"I don't mind. Do you care if your boy clothes are in with your drag?"

"Not really. Just don't pack my travel kit, I still need it."

"I left it in the bathroom," Alaska said. She delicately folded one of Katya's costumes.

Katya got up to open the curtains. When she turned back around, she watched Alaska for a few seconds before saying, "Are you always this efficient in the morning now that you're sober?" Alaska had been ready first the day before, too.

Chuckling, Alaska said, "Pretty much." She stopped packing for a moment and looked at Katya. "You know what? I used to be late every morning on tour with Sharon. It drove her nuts."

"This early bird thing might drive me nuts," Katya said.

Alaska grinned at her and went back to packing. 

"Did you talk to Sharon earlier?" Katya asked as she rubbed the back of her neck. Alaska and Sharon had made peace on tour, no doubt, Katya thought, so the other girls wouldn't kill them. Now they were genuine friends again. A reconciliation was probably right around the corner.

"Briefly. Why? Did I wake you up? I'm sorry." Alaska was folding Katya's dirty tights. Good God. The woman was out of control.

"No, I think I just heard you in my dream." She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth, passing Alaska on the way. "When I get a real job, will you be my assistant?" 

"It would be a step up from singing for drunk bridesmaids every night."

"You'd have to wear pants, though," Katya said through toothpaste. "That would drive **you** nuts."

"Men can wear dresses!" 

"Not in my very professional office, they can't."

"That's homophobic," Alaska said. Katya couldn't see her, but she could hear the amusement in Alaska's voice.

She grinned at herself in the mirror and spit out the toothpaste. "Do you want to get paid or not?" she asked.

"Only in sweaty one-dollar bills."

"That can be arranged. Are you- "

She was cut off by a knock on the door, and she grabbed some nearly dry cash from her bag to tip the waiter. Then they sat on Katya's bed with the tray between them, to share breakfast. 

xxx

"Hey, did you know St. Louis has two beer museums?" Katya asked, bouncing in her seat. Flights, Alaska had learned, left Katya jumpy afterwards.

Alaska chuckled, because the other thing she'd learned was that Katya in this mood was endlessly entertaining. "Pass," she replied as she scrolled mindlessly through Instagram.

"Cardinals hall of fame?"

"Ugh. Pass."

"World chess hall of fame?"

That made Alaska look up, "Seriously?"

Katya stabbed her finger at a picture as proof.

"Shouldn't that be in Moscow or something?" Alaska said. 

"Do not look at me, Amerikanka," Katya said in her Russian accent. "I am not Soviet spy."

Alaska chuckled again. They were sitting in baggage claim and had been for too long after their delayed flight. Katya had grown bored of her phone and wandered over to the tourist information rack. Alaska was bored of her phone, too, but she went back to scrolling anyway, just to see something other than the airport.

"Two antique car museums **and** a motorcycle museum."

"Triple pass."

"You're no fun," Katya said.

Alaska looked up again. "I think there's a rule that says you have to see the arch first if you're going to see anything."

Katya handed her the glossy brochure for the arch. Alaska laughed full out and opened it, pretending to take it very seriously.

"I repeat," Katya said. "No fun."

"We don't have time for any of this, anyway," Alaska said, more grumpily than she intended. She handed back the brochure. "I'll be lucky if I make it to the show on time at this point."

"There there," Katya said. She patted Alaska's arm with a very stiff hand and an only slightly concealed smile. "It'll be okay, I promise."

"You make it sound like I'm a petulant child." 

"You **are** a petulant child, and it's only 1:30."

Both of those facts were undeniable, so Alaska didn't deny them. Katya handed her the brochure for the Ulysses S. Grant national historic site. 

Alaska gave in and cracked up. "Maybe next time," she managed to say.

"But I won't be here next time!"

"No. I'll be very, very sad about it, and I'll take pictures for you at the Ulysses S. Grant house."

Grinning widely at Alaska, Katya picked up her phone and clicked it. Coincidentally, Alaska's phone rang.

"Yes?" Alaska answered with exaggerated patience, looking straight at Katya. Her voice echoed on the line.

"Will you still be my friend when I'm done dragooning?" Katya asked.

"Of course I will! I can't imagine not being friends with you!" She studied Katya for a few moments. "Were you really worried about that?"

Katya held up a thumb and forefinger, very close. "Little bit."

"Well, don't."

"Good. Because I'm compiling statistics on drag for a government survey."

"You **are** a Russian spy," Alaska said.

"I'm pretty sure I'm not," Katya said. "Unless I'm the Manchurian candidate. That would be exciting."

Alaska shuffled through the movie files in her brain. "Can I be Angela Lansbury?"

"You can't play my mother." Katya looked disgusted. "That would be incest."

"I'll be Frank Sinatra, then."

"In boy drag?" Katya teased.

"Fuck off," Alaska said, laughing, and was about to end the call when the buzzer rang and the belt started moving.

Katya jumped up. She dropped her phone and the brochures in Alaska's lap, and disappeared into the throng of passengers.

Alaska didn't like standing and waiting for luggage; she preferred to let the crowd thin first. She flipped through the brochures Katya had left. As she stopped on one for a museum, an idea started to take form in her head.

xxx

Katya wasn't performing that night. Alaska hadn't managed to sweet-talk the manager into adding to the lineup. So while Alaska started getting ready, Katya went out to fetch dinner for both of them.

When she came back, she stood in the bathroom doorway and offered intentionally unhelpful makeup suggestions. She'd calmed down since they'd left the airport and was actually a little tired, but there were standards to maintain.

"Stop making me laugh," Alaska complained, though Katya knew she was enjoying the commentary. "This is delicate work."

"Give me the brush, I'll do it for you."

Alaska paused, thinking. "You actually could do a good job," she said. "You're one of the only people I'd trust to do it."

Katya took a couple steps to the counter and picked out a palette from Alaska's bag that would look awful with the costume she planned to wear.

"Take it," Alaska said with a laugh. "Keep it and leave me alone."

Pouting, Katya put it away. She looked up, into the mirror, and found Alaska's reflection staring thoughtfully at her. 

"What?" Katya asked. 

"It's been three days and I'm already used to sharing a mirror with you, you bitch."

"Literally bumping elbows."

"Redoing my lip liner because I'm paying too damn much attention to you."

"Stealing your eyebrow pencils," Katya said.

Alaska paused again. "You stole my eyebrow pencils?"

"Long time ago. You were annoying me."

"You stole my eyebrow pencils to--no, I remember that! I couldn't find them at the show the next night and I tore the dressing room **and** the house apart."

Katya screwed up her face. "Sorry." She did feel bad about it. She'd felt bad about it as soon as Alaska had left. But she still had the pencils at home. 

"What else have you stolen from me?" Alaska asked with a fond smile.

"Only your heart, gurl."

"You can keep that, too," Alaska said. "I don't need it."

That was curious. Katya crossed her arms and leaned on the wall, deciding this might be a deeper conversation than she'd expected. "No?"

"Not my heart so much. Maybe my dick."

"You don't need your dick? Is it detachable? Drag queens should lip sync to 'Detachable Penis' more often."

"Trade." Alaska stopped with one eye half finished. She stared at Katya in the mirror again. "I think I'm done."

"Isn't that half the point of going on Drag Race?"

Alaska shook her head and laid everything in her hands on the counter, turning to fully face Katya. "That's exactly what I don't like about it. They want me for reasons that have nothing to do with me, you know?"

"I don't, but I aspire to."

"You're such an asshole," Alaska said affectionately.

"No, I get it," Katya said. "I'm an expert at fucking strangers, remember? There's meaningless sex that's fun, like you and I used to have semi-regularly, and there's meaningless sex where you feel like somebody's blow-up doll."

"Yes! Like an empty vessel they can fill up with whatever the fuck they want."

"We call that cum," Katya said.

Alaska scowled. "I call it the fantasies they've built up about me in their heads." 

"That too."

"I'm sorry," Alaska said, "is this really entitled? When that's kind of your job?"

"It is my job, but I choose to do it. For me being the vessel is a professional skill and a convenient home business that happens to get me laid more often. For you, maybe it's just not fun."

"It's **not** fun." Alaska thought for a moment. "I always assumed I'd like fucking five guys a night."

Katya laughed at her. "Five is a lot even for me. You might want to slow down a bit. And get tested more often."

"I was exaggerating and I get tested once a month, shut up."

"Like I said, more often."

With a head tilt, Alaska asked, "Do you get tested every two weeks?"

"Every week, hell yes. Are you kidding me?"

"Huh," Alaska said, and then brightened. "Hey, remember that night I fought with Sharon and slept on your floor? You left that note saying you'd gone to the clinic. I thought you were joking."

Katya did remember. She thought of that night often, more often than she would have liked. She said, just to tease, "Oh, **that** was a joke. I'd been the day before."

"Jesus Christ."

"You should think about it," Katya suggested.

"I should **stop** ," Alaska said. "I have stopped."

"Really?"

Frowning, Alaska took some time to reply. "I just. I want guys who actually want me for me. But I don't have time to weed them out at the fucking club, you know?"

"Now you sound entitled," Katya teased.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I was joking. It's a legitimate conundrum that I wouldn't mind experiencing myself."

"I just want-" Her expression changed, morphing into something almost dreamy.

"Want what?" Katya asked when Alaska didn't continue.

"I guess I want to fuck with feelings again," Alaska said finally.

"That is never a good idea."

"Sometimes good things come out of bad ideas. Like fucking you for the first time."

Katya felt like she'd lost the thread of this conversation. She said carefully, "I'm still not convinced that was a good thing."

"Trust me," Alaska said. "It was." She turned back to the mirror and got to work. She wasn't looking at Katya at all when she said, "You could get some trade tonight, if you want. You don't have to come to the show."

Katya was sure she'd imagined the hollowness in Alaska's voice, so she ignored it. "I told you, I saved up all my ones and I'm going to stuff them into every pair of panties but yours."

"You sure you won't be bored?" 

"Bored with you on stage?" Katya scoffed. "Never!"

Alaska grinned at her in the mirror, and Katya shifted uncomfortably on her feet before leaving the room.

She sat on a bed and turned on the TV, not intending to watch anything. She just needed noise. 

The truth was that Katya wasn't interested in sex at all these days. It happened to a lot of addicts in recovery, and it came up frequently in meetings. She still fucked for money, because she had to. But she didn't go looking for it.

And even if she wanted to go looking, the person she'd most like to look for was the queen in the next room. And that was off the table for many reasons, not just Alaska's decree. 

"You okay?" Alaska called. "You're quiet all of a sudden."

"Fine," Katya said. "I'm going to start dinner. Do you mind?"

"Go for it. I'll be out in a minute."

Katya didn't want to regret Alaska, either.

xxx

They'd only done two shows together on this trip. It was too soon for Alaska to miss having Katya on stage with her. But she did. 

As she sang, she easily found Katya in the audience. Katya stood out, like a full moon on a backdrop of distant stars. She was sharing a table with a few guys she'd probably already made lifelong friends with. Seeing Alaska's attention on her, Katya put her hands around her mouth and whooped.

Alaska smiled and went back to collecting tips. The next time she looked, Katya was holding up a bill. It made Alaska laugh as she left the stage.

She touched up her face, laughed with the girls, answered some audition tape questions, and calculated the minutes before she could dedrag and pee. The usual backstage things.

When it was time for her last number, she peered out around the curtain while the queen before her finished up. Katya was now talking intensely with one of her new friends, and the new friend was hot. He was leaning in towards Katya, listening with wide eyes, and his expression told Alaska he was interested. Very interested, and it looked genuine, too--not the leers Katya always got in drag. His hands were even at a respectful distance, again unlike the way men usually flirted with Katya. 

Alaska smiled because Katya was smiling. Happy Katya made Alaska happy.

The host introduced her and she took the stage, thanking St. Louis for their hospitality and even making a joke about the chess museum. Katya's eyes were fully on her now. The guy was looking more at Katya than at the stage. 

"I haven't always been pretty," she announced before her music started, and the small portion of the crowd who'd heard of her before Drag Race hooted and hollered.

"I haven't always been nice," and she launched into the song. She had the entire club in the palm of her hand and she knew it. Tip after tip came her way.

She saw Katya hold up a bill again, one eyebrow raised like a dare. Alaska almost broke character to laugh. Instead, she got off the stage and wove around the tables, stuffing money into the top of her dress.

The bill was still in the air when she made it to Katya's table. It was a ten, and Alaska raised an eyebrow, too, daring Katya to take it back. She sauntered over to another table and sang directly to one of the men there, then darted back to grab the ten from Katya before running to the stage. 

"Be as gay," Alaska sang a few lines later, "as that guy right there!" She pointed at Katya, of course, and the crowd loved it as much as they always did.

Katya's suitor was looking back and forth between them while Alaska said her goodbyes and thank-yous, and as she left the stage for the last time, he leaned in to speak in Katya's ear.

Katya deserved it, she thought. Katya deserved all the attention, and she didn't seem to get much out of drag, which confused the fuck out of Alaska.

She went back to the dressing room with a smile on her face.

xxx

Katya was waiting for her by the back exit, grinning widely and smoking. Alaska signed autographs and posed for selfies and spent extra time with a couple baby queens, and at the end of the line was Katya.

Alaska hugged her exuberantly. Katya pressed a Sharpie into her hand and held out an arm.

"Where did you even get that?" Alaska asked, laughing. 

Katya said nothing as Alaska scrupulously signed her arm, then blew on it to dry the ink.

"Want to come with me to the tattoo parlor so I can make this permanent?" Katya asked.

For once, Alaska couldn't tell if she was serious or not. But Katya answered that question by laughing helplessly and thrashing her hands about. Alaska double-checked her signature while she could still see it.

The hotel wasn't far, and it was a nice night. She let Katya take control of her suitcase with only the smallest protest that etiquette required, and they walked.

"What happened to that guy?" Alaska asked, though suddenly she wasn't sure she wanted to know. "Did you get his number?"

"Hmmm?" It sounded like Katya had already forgotten.

"The guy you were talking to. He looked really into you."

Katya flippantly said, "He wouldn't be once he got to know me," but Alaska sensed an undertone.

"Do you really think that?" she asked as a parade of memories started marching through her head, memories of Katya brushing off anyone who seemed inclined to romance. It had happened a lot. She'd often thought Katya was just oblivious, and now she wondered.

"I really **know** that," Katya said.

"No, you don't."

"I'm just not interested in guys who are interested in me. That's how I know there's something wrong with them."

Alaska had heard her say that before, too. She looked curiously at Katya, and Katya shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't pulling the suitcase along behind her.

"You don't want to join any club that would have you as a member?" Alaska said, making sure the joke came out jokingly.

"Exactly, Groucho! Now you understand." And Katya changed the subject.

xxx

In the morning, at an hour that was indecent for drag queens, they were off to Chicago. It was a free day for both of them and they had no plans until lunch. So while Alaska caught up on sleep in their new hotel room, Katya got on Craigslist to drum up some business for the following week. This windfall of Alaska's doing wouldn't last long. 

Later, they had lunch with a couple (a literal couple) of queens Alaska knew, and sat around for a while afterwards drinking coffee and swapping stories. They'd seen Katya's YouTube videos, too. 

Alaska checked her phone constantly. 

"Are you expecting a call from World of Wonder or what?" Katya asked.

"No," Alaska said, clearly hiding a secret. "We have somewhere to be."

"We do?"

Alaska's friends eyed one another as if they had inside information.

"Does she have an appointment to drown me in the lake or something?" Katya asked them.

"You'll see," Alaska said, and they all exchanged goodbyes.

"I love surprises and I hate surprises," Katya said in the Uber. "Tell me."

"You'll like this one, I promise." 

Katya eyed her narrowly. She was sure Alaska was leading her to a place or a person she'd enjoy, but she had to give Alaska a hard time about it. And Alaska knew that was exactly what Katya was doing, judging by the deep laugh and smiling eyes. 

When they'd arrived and were standing on the sidewalk, all Katya could say for a minute was, "Wow," and "This is- " She didn't know how to define what it was. Instead she said, "I am paying for my own ticket and you can't stop me."

"I told you you'd like it!" Alaska looked, and sounded, smugly delighted. "I brought pencils this time."

Katya hugged her impulsively, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. It was the perfect surprise. But it wasn't worth crying over, for fuck's sake.

"What?" Alaska said. "I had fun that day, too."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather go to the sports museum?" Katya asked when they could see one another's faces again.

Alaska laughed at her. "Did you collect brochures at the airport while I was in the bathroom?"

"I did," Katya said with a show of guilt that she couldn't hold on to. She was too excited. "Where did you hide the pencils?" She'd seen the insides of Alaska's luggage by now.

"I didn't. I called those two yesterday and begged them to go shopping for me. They got us little sketchbooks, too!"

"You devious bitch," Katya said. "Maybe you're the Russian spy."

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would, actually. I really would like to know."

Alaska wrapped a hand around Katya's wrist and pulled her to the steps.

It was a huge contemporary art museum. They wandered a bit, then chose a gallery and sat down in the middle of it, back to back. They played a game of describing the work in front of them to the other, to see who could get closest without looking.

Alaska won, but she insisted it was only because Katya's description was better. So they called it a draw.

In another gallery they sat shoulder to shoulder, chatting and laughing and taunting one another as they sketched the same metal sculpture. 

A very proper older couple shushed them. They apologized and put hands over their mouths and the man scowled, thinking they were mocking him. But really they were shaking as they tried to keep quiet; Katya could feel Alaska's arm quiver with a laugh she couldn't let out. 

It was time to find a new gallery. Katya got to her feet and pulled Alaska up.

They didn't get lost in time like they had at the museum in Boston, but they did stay for hours. Eventually Alaska's metabolism demanded that they leave and get dinner. 

Katya held out her sketchbook to Alaska, to exchange like they had last time, though there were still a lot of pages left.

"Keep it," Alaska said. "Draw me something later."

And Katya's mind was full of ideas.

xxx

They went to a show that night, to see one of the queens they'd had lunch with, and they sat with his other half. Katya looked absolutely enchanted, her eyes glossy and her mouth open in admiration. 

"I think I'm in love with Chicago drag," she said between numbers.

Alaska loved it too, and she loved this moment, watching her friend on stage, and other girls she admired whether she'd heard of them before or not, and especially watching Katya. 

Katya's joy was infectious. Alaska seemed to be finding it more infectious every day, and she was already dreading the end of their trip. She'd have to find more excuses to get to Boston.

At intermission, their friend went back to the dressing room to help out. Katya's eyes were sparkling and a slow smile washing over her face.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go next door."

Alaska had her doubts but she couldn't say no. She didn't want to say no.

Next door was another venue in the same club, this one with a DJ and a lot of sweaty bodies. Katya dragged Alaska to the floor and they danced ridiculously, making fun of each other's silliest moves.

After a while, Alaska needed a break and went to the bar to buy water for both of them. When she returned, Katya was in her own world, looking like she'd done poppers though Alaska knew she wouldn't. Every beat of the music went straight to Katya's hips, Alaska was sure. Katya claimed not to like music much, but damn, did she know what to do with it.

Katya had two dance modes: loose-limbed inflatable tube man, and lush sensual goddess. Neither required a partner, and both could be done with eyes closed. She and Alaska had both started in tube man mode but Katya was in goddess mode now, unaware of anyone else on the floor and possibly on the planet. 

Alaska stood off to the side, entranced and more than a little turned on. Katya was off limits for the moment, but Alaska wasn't blind.

Eventually, and probably a good while after the intermission had ended in the other room, Katya opened her eyes and blinked, looking shocked and maybe a little alarmed not to see Alaska. But she found Alaska with just a quick glance, then scowled and pointed sternly at the space in front of her until Alaska had to laugh and give in.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, missy?" Katya asked as she accepted the water.

"You looked like you were enjoying yourself," Alaska teased. "You looked like you might need to jerk off any minute."

"Fuck off and dance with me." She went back to tube man, and that was a style Alaska could keep up with.

By the time they made it back to the show they were both giddy and flushed and a bit delirious, and the queens were just finishing their finale.

xxx

Alaska refused to get out of bed in the morning. "I wear high heels all the time. How can I be so sore from one night of dancing?" She pulled the sheet over her head and moaned.

"Petulant child," Katya teased.

It just made the lump in the bed moan some more. 

They didn't have a flight to catch, so Katya left the lump to itself. She went out to get breakfast and caffeine, and when she returned Alaska was still out, her eyes shut tight as she breathed with her whole body.

It would be creepy, if tempting, to sit and watch her. Katya snapped a picture for future blackmail, and ate quickly. She knew Alaska's phone was on silent, so she texted from the elevator. "Secret Soviet business. Call if I'm not back when you get up."

She studied Google maps and chose a direction to walk. She was, in fact, on a mission. First, she needed more coffee, because her brain had to be in top shape to complete the second item on her list: to buy something nice for Alaska. But what do you buy for the Ru girl who has everything?

Nothing in any store window inspired her. Nothing she saw on the street inspired her. She wanted it to be funny, not too personal, and easy to fit in a suitcase, and she didn't have the attention span to look forever. 

She'd almost decided on a fucking Target gift card when it came to her. 

She traced her steps to a dollar store she'd passed earlier, and bought plastic tablecloths in every color and pattern they had.

Alaska hadn't texted yet so Katya sat in a park and drew a gaggle of geese, all of them with Alaska's horse face.

It wasn't quite finished when she finally got a text notification. "Where the fuck are you and thank you for breakfast and can you bring me more tea?" 

Katya laughed, typed, "Yes, ma'am," and set off back to the hotel.

xxx

That afternoon, Alaska had all the energy while Katya had already used hers up, but Katya didn't want to sleep. After lazing about in the hotel for a while and amusing themselves with a video game, they ended up walking aimlessly outside and came upon a free outdoor concert with Puerto Rican music.

"Menudo!" Alaska whispered as they watched, jostling Katya's shoulder. 

Katya turned up her nose and said, "None of these guys is as cute as Angelo."

xxx

Katya was returning from her last pre-tuck pee when she heard a loud rip, a familiar wail, and an equally familiar "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK." She hurried back to the dressing room, where she found the local girls crowding around Alaska, offering sympathy and borrowed costumes.

"Fuck!" Alaska said again. She half-heartedly started pulling the dress down but then saw Katya walking across the room. "Katyaaaaaa!"

"No, don't take it off!" Katya said with a sympathetic chuckle. "Let me look at it. Where's the tear?"

"The zipper," Alaska said, raising her arm. Her face was flawless, her wig pinned on, but the dress gaped open on the side. "I knew it was on its last legs, but I thought I could make it last a little longer. So stupid. Fuck!"

"That is stupid," Katya said as she checked the damage. "I could have fixed it for you this afternoon. It's okay, I can sew you into it, easy."

"You're a saint, gurl," Alaska said as Katya went to her bag for the sewing kit she always had with her in drag. Alaska had a kit, too, but it was smaller and less well-used and depended a lot more on hot glue.

"Hold it together at the top for me?" There was no time for pins. Alaska's first number was well before Katya's.

Alaska watched her make small, neat stitches and said, "I wish I had your talent for sewing."

"It's not talent," Katya said. "It's practice." Katya could make a garment. Katya could make a lot of garments. But she was no designer. Alaska was the one with the eye for design.

"That looks pretty practiced," one of the younger local queens said.

"Don't tell me you can't sew?" Katya asked without looking up.

A much more experienced queen, the host of the night's show, said, "I keep telling them!"

"Kids these days," Alaska said, and laughed at herself.

"Stand still!"

"Sorry."

Katya sewed up and down twice and knotted off the thread half a dozen times, to be safe. "Okay, I think you're done. Raise both arms for me?"

Alaska obeyed, and the stitches stayed put.

"Twist a bit?"

Alaska did a little dance.

"That should last the night, at least," Katya said with a smile.

"A **saint** ," Alaska said again. She enveloped Katya in a hug and kissed her on the cheek. "I wish I could take you with me everywhere."

Katya quickly put some distance between them. "I'll give you a dirty t-shirt and you can take my stench with you everywhere," she said.

Alaska offered to help her get dressed, but Katya said no.

After the show, of course, Katya had to use the seam ripper to get Alaska out of her costume. She took up Alaska's suggestion to dedrag first. 

Alaska was playfully, flirtatiously impatient as Katya began. It would take longer to get the stitches out than it had to put them in.

"I mean it," Alaska said. "Everywhere!"

"I mean it!" Katya said. "Dirty t-shirt!"

It was a mistake. Alaska laughed uproariously and Katya had to wait until she could stand still again.

xxx

That night, Katya was checking in for her flight home when Alaska sat down next to her on the bed. They were both in pajamas and they both had wet hair.

"Excuse me!" Katya said. She slid to the side, but not by much. "Personal space!"

Alaska just laughed. She'd been touchy-feely all night, hugging Katya again during their last number, holding Katya's hand while they curtsied on stage, bumping shoulders in the elevator. 

And Katya could still feel that kiss on the cheek from before the show, as much as she'd tried to scrub it off in the shower.

"I wish we didn't have to leave tomorrow," Alaska said.

Katya murmured a noncommittal "Mmm." She'd had more fun with Alaska over the last few days than she'd had with anyone in months, maybe since she'd gotten sober, and she was sad to go, too. But if Alaska came up with anything else as thoughtful as the museum surprise, Katya might have to start fucking her again, and that could not happen. As good a friend as she'd turned out to be, Alaska fucking Thunderfuck was not, and would never be, a healthy life decision.

"Go away," Katya said, shoving Alaska towards her own bed. "I need my beauty sleep."

Alaska grinned at her and said, "Tea."

xxx

They were both up early, though they had plenty of time before they had to be at the airport. Alaska was pouting and making a show of being unhappy and whining that she already missed Katya. Katya said little because if she let herself, she'd whine about already missing Alaska, too.

"You're quiet. Are you sad, too?" Alaska asked hopefully, as she sat on the bed cross-legged, sorting through her clothes.

"No more of this charmed life and artificially inflated income," Katya quipped.

Alaska's face fell. "Artificially?"

"Never mind," Katya said, shaking her head. She'd seen a shared look between Alaska and the club manager the night before and decided to ignore it, but she was feeling prickly this morning. She shouldn't have said anything.

"It's what you deserve," Alaska said. "You deserve a lot more than that."

"Only for hooking."

"Putting yourself down again?"

"It's what I do. Have we met?"

Katya knew what her brain was up to. She'd been through enough rehab and enough therapy to know that her subconscious needed to push Alaska away, only because Katya wanted so badly to stay near. 

It was time, clearly, for the tablecloths. 

Her suitcase was open anyway, and they were neatly stacked, in color wheel order, under clothes she hadn't folded yet and probably wouldn't. She extracted them and solemnly held them out like a sommelier with a fine wine. 

"What is-?" Alaska asked, and smiled as she realized. "Oh, my God, you didn't." She faked a gasp and met Katya's eyes and said, "You went to the dollar store just for me?"

"Not just for you. I also bought off-brand unicorn poop and some Flamin' Hot Cheetos," though she hadn't.

Alaska took them, laughing, and flipped through the pile. Katya fled to the shower because neither of them was fully dressed, and there would be hugging any second.

"Thank you," Alaska shouted through the door. "Best present I ever got."

"You owe me," Katya shouted back, but she was smiling.

xxx

At Katya's gate, they stood close together, not saying much. Alaska handed Katya her sketchbook and expected Katya to reciprocate.

Katya smiled softly. "I hid yours in your carryon this morning."

"Bitch. Don't look at it until you're on the plane, okay?"

The announcer called for Katya's row to board. Alaska hugged her hard, and Katya was stiff for a moment before hugging back just as hard. Katya had been down all morning. Alaska hoped the hug would help.

"Thanks for coming," she said, not letting go yet.

"Thanks for inviting me." Katya pulled away and didn't meet Alaska's eyes. "I have to go." She turned, and waved just once before disappearing from Alaska's view.

Alaska walked away, not interested in seeing the plane taxi away. Her flight wasn't for another hour.

She found a quietish corner to sit in, put in her earbuds, and searched her bag for Katya's sketchbook. Then she laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and texted Katya. She didn't know or care if Katya would see it before she had to put her phone on airplane mode.

"A gaggle of Justins!" she wrote. "I love it!" And in a second text she added, "Miss you bitch!"

xxx

When Katya found her seat, she put the sketchbook down before getting herself situated. Then she forgot all about it, and sat on top of it, and didn't remember until she got Alaska's text.

"Shit," she said to herself. "Where did I- " She tore apart her backpack twice and finally dug under her behind--her seatmate looking at her in a way that would make lesser men question their manhood--until she found it and held it up triumphantly.

"See?" she asked. "I wasn't just scratching my ass!"

Thankfully, the woman laughed and went back to her magazine.

Katya flipped slowly through the pages, starting with the museum. Then she got to the ones Alaska had added. She didn't know how Alaska had found the time, because there were a few.

There were two ugly costumes Katya would totally wear, a manicured hand holding an iced coffee, a very rough caricature of them both looking like idiots on stage. But Alaska had hidden the best one in the very back, at the end of all the blank pages.

It was Katya, asleep on her side in a hotel bed and looking more peaceful than she ever felt when she was conscious.

Her eyes filled up. 

Alaska had seen something in her that Katya herself didn't recognize.

Alaska had studied her sleeping, which, Katya thought happily, made Alaska a bit of a creep, too.

Alaska **missed** her. Alaska was-

Katya shut the book and shoved it deep, deep down in her backpack, and resisted pulling it out for the rest of the flight.

xxx

Alaska was soon back to her weird and usually wonderful job, and questioning all her life decisions.

"Phi Phi, look out for that mailbox!" she shouted.

Willam smoothly grabbed Phi Phi by the arm, steered her out of the path of disaster, and said, "You're so good to us, Alaska."

"I really am."

"Alaska's the mom friend," said Phi Phi, who was only a few months younger than Alaska.

"I am fucking not," she huffed. 

She was herding half a dozen drunk and high queens from the bar back to the hotel at three in the morning. It was their second night back on tour and if she had to hear one more time about weak drinks and below standard trade, she was going to lead them into a sketchy alley and leave them there.

Chad would be a good mom friend, she thought. Chad would be a much better mom friend than Alaska. Everyone respected Chad. Everyone listened to Chad. But Chad, who in a rare event had joined them on this leg of the tour, had brought her sweetheart of a husband along and wouldn't have to put up with this shit. 

"My previous company was much more congenial than you bitches," Alaska announced as she yanked Detox out of the street. 

"I heard you cheated on us with another queen, Alaska," said Manila.

Jinkx cooed, "Oooh, do tell!"

Alaska started looking for that sketchy alley.

Pandora, slightly less incapacitated than the others, seemed to notice then that Alaska was genuinely frustrated and not just playing. "Go ahead, Alaska," she said, taking control. "We'll follow you and I'll make sure they don't end up in a ditch."

" **Thank** you," Alaska said, and sped up to put some distance behind her. 

"Spoilsport!" Willam called after her.

Alaska felt calmer after just a few steps, once their voices were quieter. She didn't have a low opinion of drunks. Drinking was fun. She just didn't like being in charge of them, and that, she realized, was why Michelle never came out after a show. 

Following Michelle's advice had worked out pretty damn well for Alaska in the past.

She took out her phone and texted Katya as she walked. "Thanks for always knowing the way back to the hotel."

They were in the same time zone, on a night when Katya had headlined her Russian show, and she'd be heading for bed if not already asleep. Her reply didn't take long. "That honeymoon ended quick."

"I'm going to quit and come live with you."

"I'm sorry, I am not looking for an assistant at this time."

"Well fuck," Alaska typed. "Now what am I going to do with my life?"

"You're going to win the next All Stars," Katya replied.

xxx

While Alaska was bemoaning her present, Katya threw herself into her future.

She worked on her personal statement. She crammed for the GRE. She set up appointments to meet professors. She decided to apply to two schools in California, on top of the three in Boston, and considered applying to another in Chicago. She worked extra retail hours and she repaired old costumes so she didn't have to buy fabric, and she diligently saved her hooking money, even more than she usually did.

Alaska quizzed her sometimes on vocabulary, on facetime. Katya had taken pictures from the test prep book and sent them to her.

"You are going to ace this," Alaska said. 

Katya actually felt pretty sure of herself at that moment. "I **am** going to ace this!" she said, and Alaska laughed a proud laugh.

She really did think she could do it. She'd always been good at school. Now she felt prepared. She felt energized. She felt responsible. 

She felt lonely, and she shouldn't. She **couldn't**. 

She still grabbed the phone the second Alaska called, every time.

xxx

The tour bus caught on fire.

The tour bus **caught on fire**.

As if Alaska's mood wasn't bad enough already.

After tolerating the rest of their party for a while, and realizing how peevish and bratty her behavior had been ("It doesn't get better. It gets **worse** ," she'd sneered and probably spat at Willam's camera), she walked out of hearing distance and plopped down on the grass. 

Her first thought was to call her mother, but her mother would just worry, and she'd worry about Alaska's mood as much as the fire. So she texted Katya instead.

"Bus," she typed. "Fire." 

She waited a few seconds. Instead of a reply, she got a call. "What the fuck?" Katya said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, we're fine. Just bored and annoyed. I need to talk to someone sane."

"One, are you sure you've called the right number, and two, is anyone as annoyed as you?"

"Bitch," Alaska said, chuckling. "Of course not. Willam was for a while, but he's over it."

"Where are you? Are you safe?"

"On the median strip of some interstate somewhere."

"Are you **safe**?" Katya said again.

Alaska smiled. Katya wasn't even trying to make her smile, but she'd succeeded anyway. "It was a small fire, there's plenty of grass, and the weather's okay. We just have to wait a while."

"You should have led with that! I don't need a heart attack!" 

"Sorry." Alaska was still smiling. She lay down on her back and shut her eyes against the sun. "How did your interview go?"

"It wasn't an interview, it was a meeting. We're not **undergrads** ," Katya said with joking contempt.

"Not undergrads. But how was it?"

"I don't think she hated me."

"That's a good start," Alaska said.

She only had one earbud in and she heard Michelle calling to her, then approaching. "Please tell me we're ready to go," she told Michelle without hanging up on Katya.

"Not yet," Michelle said. "I just wanted to check on you."

Alaska tilted her head back so she could see Michelle upside-down. "How do you put up with us? I don't even want to put up with us half the time."

"I just laugh and remind myself that you do have actual mothers. And then I leave you alone."

"That is fine advice," Katya said in Alaska's ear.

"Ugh," Alaska said.

It was difficult to gauge Michelle's expression from this position, but Alaska was pretty sure concern and patience were in there somewhere. Michelle said, "We were going to pool our resources and make lunch out of it. Do you want to join us?"

"Maybe in a bit," Alaska said, and Michelle retreated.

"Is it the kind of tour bus with those cubby beds?" Katya asked.

"No, just a regular bus. Unfortunately."

"Earplugs?" 

"Somewhere," Alaska said. "I like all these people. I like talking to all these people. I don't know why I'm being so pissy." And before Katya could say it she added with a smile, "If you call me a petulant child I'm hanging up on you."

Katya laughed. "You're my favorite petulant child, and you will be until my siblings reproduce. I'm sure all the girls love you anyway."

Alaska chuckled. "They do. Nobody's told me off yet."

"I'm very happy to hear that. Listen, I've got to go. I have another meeting this afternoon and I need to bathe my sweaty self first."

"Oh, right!" Alaska said, remembering. The meeting was, she thought, with the department head at Katya's top choice school. "Good luck and thanks for putting up with me."

"I just laugh and remember you have an actual mother," Katya said.

Alaska got up and headed back to her friends in a much better mood.

xxx

"No more," Katya said on facetime after getting five words wrong in a row. "Brain dead."

Alaska smiled thoughtfully at her. "Were you the kind of student who pushed deadlines and stayed up all night, or the kind who finished everything a week ahead of time?"

"I have ADD. What do you think?" 

"Deadline pushing?" Alaska asked, smiling even bigger.

"Absolutely. All this advance planning is highly abnormal." She'd been able to hyperfocus on it, for some reason, and was grateful. Sometimes her brain cooperated.

"But you're always on time now," Alaska said. "How are you on time now?"

"Easy. I need to eat. I'd rather not, but I need to." She yawned and rubbed at her eyes. It was later in her time zone than it was in Alaska's, and she always needed to reset her brain after overtaxing it. Also ADD.

"You look like you're going to fall over," Alaska said.

"Kitten.gif."

Alaska looked so confused that Katya had to laugh at her. "You want me to send you cat gifs?"

"What I want," Katya said as she stood and dragged herself into her bedroom, "is for you to send me an extra 12 hours every day until I take the damn thing."

"You're ready **now** ," Alaska said. "You could take it tomorrow and you'd be fine."

"You haven't seen my quantitative reasoning practice tests." She sat down on her unmade bed and pulled the covers up to her chest. "Tell me funny tour bedtime stories?" 

Alaska spun a tale about the time they'd all had to run across the airport for a close connection, who got there first (Alaska, with her long legs, and Manila), who complained the whole time (Sharon, and Phi Phi), who nearly ran down a pair of nuns (Willam), who was too high to speedwalk let alone run (Jinkx), who ran gracefully and didn't complain at all (Pandora and Ivy), and who just said fuck it and walked regally the whole way (Chad, Latrice, and Michelle). The story ended--and Alaska stretched it out, with the same perfect timing she showed off on stage--with all of them standing at the gate, laughing their asses off, and watching the plane pull away from the terminal without them.

Katya cackled and yawned and said, "See, you **do** like these people!"

"Most of the time," Alaska admitted. "Sometimes I still want to push them out the emergency exit."

"Question. Are airports better or worse than buses?"

It took a few moments for Alaska to decide. "Worse because they're more stressful," she concluded. "Better because we can avoid each other."

"So your answer is no."

Chuckling, Alaska agreed, "My answer is no." Then her face brightened with a new thought. "Hey, I won't be in Boston for a while, but can you come see me in Providence and save me from these bitches?"

"That's a long way to go for no booty," Katya teased.

"You said it was like an hour!"

"Two on the train. Anyway I'm headlining a fundraiser across town that night, sorry." She knew the date of the Providence show. She didn't have to ask.

"Maybe for part of the day then?" Alaska was sincere, Katya could tell from her eyes. "I'd really like to see you."

Katya wasn't going to admit how much she'd like to see Alaska, too. So she just said yes.

xxx

Katya facetimed as soon as she got her scores.

Alaska was out to lunch with some of the girls. She slipped away from their table and toasted a beaming Katya with the bottle of water she still had in her hand.

Laughing breathlessly, digging in her backpack to find her own water, Katya held it up and toasted herself. She was outside, on a street Alaska was pretty sure she recognized.

"I told you you could do it," Alaska said.

"I'd like to thank my vocabulary coach, the lovely Alaska Thunderfuck," Katya pronounced, "and my math coach, my little sister." She crossed a street and sat in what looked like that huge park near her house. It was windy; her hair was blowing in all directions. "I'd like to thank my college professors who looked at my personal statement, my overeducated family who all looked at my personal statement, my sponsor who looked at my personal statement, and, again, Miss Thunderfuck, who read my personal statement to filth. I'm required to thank the academy. Most of all, I'd like to thank Satan, for dating me in high school. Amen." Katya finished with a big grin, very proud of herself.

By the end of this speech, Alaska was laughing so loudly that her friends, who were now splitting the bill, looked at her across the restaurant. Alaska waved them off while Katya wheezed and scream-laughed at herself.

"You're my fucking hero," Alaska said. She returned to the table, contributed some cash, lagged behind her friends as they walked back, and kept talking with Katya the whole time.

xxx

It came over Alaska like a warm, gentle wave. 

She woke up and sat up, still riding the wave, and she was flooded with memories of Katya: all the times they'd fucked, all the places they'd fucked, all the ways they'd fucked. Katya laughing, Katya making everyone around her laugh, Katya concentrating, Katya dressed and undressed. Alaska automatically looked to the other bed, though it had been weeks since that blond head was in it.

Her dreams had been different than those memories.

They'd been talking about the future right before Alaska went to bed, talking about Katya's career and what Alaska might do if she ever gave up drag. About what it would be like for Katya to leave the sex work behind, how much Alaska was hoping for another All Stars, and how badly she wanted to win it. About Katya maybe getting accepted at a school in California. About the lyrics Alaska was writing with beats her producer had sent her, and she even sang some for Katya. About someday, maybe, being able to afford houses and travel the world just for fun. Alaska had fallen asleep still thinking about it.

What her dreams told her, what she'd never realized until just that moment, was that in those futures she'd imagined, there was always a warm, glowing, perpetual motion machine standing by her side, holding her hand.

She laughed at herself and fell back on the mattress. She said, "You are full of surprises, Brian McCook."

She wanted to call Katya right that minute. She even grabbed her phone, but then put it down quickly.

This wasn't something you could spring on a person. This was something that needed to be thought about and chewed over, and even when the thinking and chewing were finished, it couldn't be said on the phone.

She'd be seeing Katya in less than a week. She stayed there in bed with her eyes closed, smiling dreamily, and started running dialogue in her head.

xxx

Katya had arrived first and claimed a table, so Alaska bent down to hug her tight. "I missed you so much, you bitch," she said.

"Yes, yes, I missed you, too," Katya said, shoving her away playfully. Her eyes were bluer than Alaska remembered, her face unshaven, her smile open and eager.

Grinning, still out of breath from rushing here even though she wasn't late, Alaska settled into a chair and looked around. It was a cafe near the university, and she saw students with laptops open, an earnest conversation between what looked like two professors, and a case filled with baked goods. "Why here?" she asked Katya.

Katya shrugged. "You like tea," she said. "They have tea." She leaned towards Alaska and gave her a secretive look. "They **only** have tea."

"What? No coffee?" Alaska laughed.

"Nope! Also, I was once unjustly and unceremoniously fired from one of their Boston locations for stealing money I didn't steal." 

"You were framed!"

"I was!" Katya said happily. "So I just like to drop in now and then, on the off chance one of them works here and can see what a model of success and whoredom I've become." She tilted her head and smiled almost shyly. "You remember that story?"

"Of course I do. Why are you surprised?"

"Mental illness and chronic low self-esteem. Go read the menu, it'll take a while. "

Alaska ignored the command. "See, I'm not buying that anymore," she said, still smiling. "I don't think you have low self-esteem. I think you know you're awesome."

"I do?"

"What you have is negative self-talk, because your brain never stops attacking you for things that happened years ago."

Katya deflected. Of course she did. "Well, somebody's been going to therapy."

Someday, Alaska thought, maybe she could convince Katya to stop doing that. "No, that was from a book," she said. "But I have been going to therapy."

"Aha! The truth finally comes out! Of her well, to chastise mankind."

Alaska narrowed her eyes and asked, "Is that a reference I'm supposed to get? You know how much I hate missing references."

"You absolute uncultured swine," Katya said. She grabbed her phone off the table and googled something. "What, you didn't spend two semesters on art history at art school?"

"I spent two semesters on theater history in theater school."

"Okay, I take back the uncultured, but you're still swine. Here, look." She handed over the phone.

"I like it," Alaska said. "What was the naked lady doing in the well?"

"The naked lady is Truth, hello! And some French asshole threw her down there."

"Ouch."

"Mmm."

"She looks like you," Alaska said as she gave the phone back.

"Only because she's naked," Katya said. She was more fidgety than usual, Alaska noticed, fiddling with sugar packets--they were the long kind, not the usual squat rectangles--and bouncing one knee. "And we've spent more time together naked than. Um. Anything else. I can't think of the word."

"Clothed?" Alaska suggested. "And I don't think that's true anymore."

"Yes!" Katya said, throwing up her hands. "Clothed. But she looks more like you than me. Look how long her face is. Like a- "

Alaska laughed and hit Katya's arm. "If you say horse I'm going to kill you. But that's," she stopped, because Katya had thrown her off her prepared speech game. That was what Katya did, and Alaska **liked** that. She liked it a lot. "Actually, clothed is a good segue, thank you."

"Segue to what? Horses? Nakedness? Are you going to proposition me and make me ride you like a horse? Because we agreed to no booty and I'm not as cheap as I look."

Alaska's brain was happily bouncing around in her skull, trying to keep up with Katya. "Let me guess," she teased. "Trains make you jumpy like planes do?"

"More," Katya said. She put down the sugar packet in her hands and shoved the little dish away. "Sorry, I'll try to rein it in. Rein. That was not a horse pun."

Alaska pushed the sugar dish back and smiled. "No, don't rein it in," she said warmly. "I like it."

Feigning bashfulness, Katya said, "You **are** going to proposition me."

"No," Alaska said. "Yes. I." She shook her head, her brain now racing less pleasantly. She'd spent hours and hours practicing how to say this, but things rarely went as planned with Katya. Which made her utterly fascinating, to Alaska. "Clothing. The segue was to clothing."

The shyness disappeared as Katya peered at her in that way that made Alaska feel translucent, sometimes. "You're nervous," she said. "Why are you- "

Alaska took a deep breath. "Because I came here to tell you that I want to spend more time with you. Clothed. With less nakedness. Or actually more nakedness, but also a lot more clothing."

"Are you- " Katya squinted at Alaska, looked around the cafe, and squinted at Alaska again. In her most faux-flirtatious tone she said, "Are you asking me on a date?" She wiggled a little in her chair, smirking.

"No," Alaska said, flustered. "No, I-. Well, maybe. I just. I like you. I like you a lot."

Katya's expression sobered and closed off in a way Alaska knew and hated. "Okay."

"I like you a lot more than a hookup, or a friend."

"Okay."

"I." Alaska didn't know how else to explain. All the pretty words she'd put together in her head were gone, and Katya was physically pulling away, slumping back in her chair and taking her elbows off the table. 

"What is that look for?" Alaska asked. "Please pick up on this fast, because I feel like I'm making a fool of myself."

"Okay."

"Brian," Alaska tried to tease. "It'd be really nice if you said a different word at some point."

"Okay," Katya said. She looked like a stranger. "Why?"

"Why what? Why you should say a different word, or why I like you?"

"Let's start with the second one."

"What? I." Alaska shook her head. "I just fucking do! What the hell, you are not usually this dumb."

"I'm not dumb, I'm cautious."

"Cautious is always reasonable," Alaska said slowly. "But why are you staring at me like you have x-ray eyes?"

"Because I'm not in the mood to get my heart broken today, Justin."

"I- " What the fuck, Alaska thought. That gentle wave was rolling into an undertow, crashing over her and yanking her down. "Are we having two different conversations?"

"I don't think we are," Katya said.

"I know you're not interested in guys who are interested in you," Alaska tried teasing, "but- "

"You want a relationship."

" **Thank** you." Alaska's heart filled with relief. "Finally. Oh, my God." But the relief veered away as she saw Katya's face. "You don't. That's okay. Forget it."

"No, it's not that I don't want it. I just." Katya was fidgeting even more now, as if she couldn't stay in the seat. As if she was about to bolt. "No, you know what?" she said, grabbing her backpack as she stood up. "I can't do this today." And she did bolt.

After a moment of shock, Alaska ran after her. She never had looked at the menu. "Brian!" she said once she was outside. Her eyes were tearing up and Katya was moving fast through a throng of students. "Brian, wait! Please!"

Katya stopped on the sidewalk, but she didn't turn around. When Alaska reached her, weaving through the strangers without seeing them, she decided to respect Katya's choice to avoid eye contact. Instead she stood behind Katya and just barely touched Katya's shoulder, making Katya sigh.

"I'm sorry," Alaska said, though she didn't understand what she'd done wrong. "Can we please just forget I said anything?"

"I can't," Katya said. It was cold and desperate at the same time. "Can you?"

"I told you I'm sorry. I'm happy to be just friends. It's okay if you don't want- "

"That's exactly the problem, Justin. I **do** want."

"What?"

Instead of explaining, Katya shrugged Alaska's hand off her shoulder and said, "I should have known you were up to something. Setting up gigs for me, paying clubs to pay me-"

"I didn't- "

"Yes, you did. I can see through you, remember? I let it slide because you meant well and we were having fun. But you- "

"Okay, yes, I paid half, but I wasn't trying to bribe you! I just wanted to spend more time with you! I didn't even know yet!"

"Of course you didn't know yet," Katya said. Alaska could tell she was purposely controlling her voice. "Why would you have thought this through at all first?"

Alaska's spine stiffened. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means," Katya said intensely, and Alaska could see her back and arms shaking as the words got louder, "that I'm already in love with you, you fucking cunt, and I can't be your trade anymore!"

"Well, maybe I'm in love with you, too, you bitch, and I don't want you to be trade! I want you to be- " Alaska stopped and gasped as her ears caught up with her mouth.

Katya spun around and gaped at her. 

"What?" they both asked at the same time, and "No, you- " Katya said, and Alaska said, "Since **when**?" 

Katya's face crumpled, and tears started to fall. "Fuck," she said. "I told you I couldn't do this today, and you chased me down the fucking street anyway!"

"Brian?" Alaska asked gently. 

"Fuck," Katya said again, blinking fast. She looked up to the sky and back to Alaska. "I kind of--might've--liked you more than a hookup all along."

Alaska's brain seemed to stall for a second and she heard herself say, "You never said anything!"

"You were with someone!"

"We broke up!" Alaska said.

"And then you were rebounding all over everywhere," Katya said sadly, "and I- "

"Yeah, I was rebounding all over everywhere, and I was really careful to keep you out of it!" 

Katya sniffled. "And you were so devastated and you loved him so much, and I always thought..."

"You thought I'd get back together with **Aaron**?" Alaska said. How could Katya have thought that when she'd watched the whole fucked-up debacle? "What the fuck, Brian?"

"What the fuck, Justin?" Katya said nastily.

"I." Alaska forced herself to take a few even breaths, and saw Katya doing the same. It wasn't unreasonable that Katya had thought that, she realized, thinking back over the past few months. It wasn't unreasonable at all. 

She took Katya's hand, expecting Katya to jerk it away but she didn't. "I'm not getting back with him," Alaska said, squeezing tight. "I'm not fucking around with trade anymore. I'm crazy about you, too, and you said- "

"I know what I said."

"Then isn't this good?" She smiled gently at Katya. "If we both- "

"No, it's **not** good." Tears dropped onto their joined hands, and now Katya did jerk hers away. "Fuck, I want to go buy some meth right this fucking instant."

"What?" Alaska's stomach clenched. "You want to--you won't- "

"No, I fucking won't. This is exactly why I had to leave, Justin. And you fucking **followed** me, and you can just fuck right off, okay?"

"Brian- "

"No. I'm going." She took a few steps, enough to know that Alaska wouldn't follow her, then turned around. She was looking past Alaska, not at her. "I'm sorry. I have to."

Alaska stood shell-shocked on the sidewalk, embarrassed and hurt and wiping away tears and suddenly aware that anyone on the sidewalk could recognize her, and she watched Katya go.

She'd thought it would be simple, a yes/no question. Yes, and either their few hours together would turn into a date, or they'd choose another day and make it special. No, and Katya would laugh and brush her off like she always brushed off guys, and nothing would change. She'd thought wrong.

Leave it to Katya to turn _simple_ into _what the actual fuck_.

xxx

Katya hid under the hood of her sweatshirt on the train, so no one could see her crying. 

She didn't go home, once she got to Boston. She smoked half a pack on the way to see a friend, the closest thing she had to a drag mother. When nobody buzzed her in right away, she leaned on the button until she got results.

"What are you doing here?" her friend asked at the door to her apartment. "I thought you'd be rutting in a hotel room and end up canceling the show tonight and pissing everyone off."

"I told you," Katya said stiffly. "No fucking." She hadn't told anybody outside of a meeting about not wanting to fuck at all, but she'd told a lot of people about not fucking Alaska while they both worked on getting and staying sober.

"Okay," her friend said. "No fucking. Why are you wearing a hole in my carpet?"

Katya hadn't realized she'd been stomping back and forth in the living room, probably disturbing the neighbors. So she stopped, and she screwed up her face because she didn't want to cry again. "Alaska fucking Thunderfuck," she said, "says she's in love with me."

"So? You've been pining after her for ages."

"Not pining," Katya clarified. "Lusting."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night. I still don't see how this is a problem."

Katya gritted her teeth. "Because Alaska Thunderfuck will never be a- "

"-a healthy life decision, I know."

"Then you should get why I'm pissed off!" Katya said.

"Because for some reason I will never understand, that skinny bitch makes you feel actual emotions, and you don't know what to do with them?"

"I know exactly what to do with emotions!" Katya said. "Drown them in alcohol. Which I can't even fucking do right now, and she knows that!"

Her friend peered at her, tightly wound as she was, and then said, "Let me get you some water."

"I don't need water!" But she went along into the kitchen anway.

"You definitely need a cookie."

"Of course I need a cookie," Katya admitted. She shoved one into her mouth, grabbed four more, and said with her mouth full, "We never even got a chance to eat!"

Her friend looked like she was trying to talk a stranger down off a ledge and needed to keep a safe distance. "So Alaska Thunderfuck is not a healthy decision. Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Katya asked between mouthfuls. "She's as fucked up as I am!"

"She **was**. It sounds like she's doing pretty great now that she's clean."

"She is. It's infuriating." It made Katya proud as hell, but it really was infuriating.

"So maybe now...?" The question trailed off.

"Now?" Katya spat back. "For fuck's sake, she loses interest in men as soon as the dick leaves her ass!" A little corner of her brain whispered, _She's never lost interest in you_ , but Katya couldn't argue with herself and her friend at the same time. 

"Then maybe," her friend said evenly, "not **right** now, but..."

"What? What the fuck are you- No. **No!** " Katya shoved the last cookie in her mouth and didn't care that she was spitting crumbs as she spoke. "Why would you even say that, that's not- Fuck, I should have gone straight to a meeting! At least they'd understand what I'm talking about!" 

"Then explain it to me," was the patient response. "Can you even explain it to yourself?"

"Fuck this," Katya said. Tears filled her eyes, because she couldn't explain it to herself at all. "Thanks for the sugar." And she stormed out.

"You're not going to skip out on the show, are you?" her friend called out the window.

 **"Fuck!"** Katya shouted back, because she didn't know how she could get on stage like this, but she had to do it.

She cried some more as she walked. But she also got her act together enough to text the friend whose home she'd just invaded and apologize.

xxx

Her act wasn't completely together. She stupidly called Alaska after her meeting. She knew confrontation was a trigger for her, and she called anyway. A lot of good that meeting had done, she thought.

Alaska picked up before the first ring finished. She'd sent texts and left a voicemail that Katya hadn't responded to. 

"Brian?" She sounded teary. She also sounded worried, but Katya didn't have enough emotions left to handle that right now. "Are you okay? Where are you?"

"We were friends!" Katya said loudly. She was on the Common, halfway home, pacing near a bench she and Alaska had once shared. She didn't care if anyone heard.

"Were?" Alaska asked while Katya kept ranting. " **Were** friends?"

"We were **good** friends. I hate that you ruined it!"

"I didn't mean to ruin anything! I wanted to make it better!"

"Well, you failed."

"For fuck's sake, Brian. I'm sorry I said anything. I never imagined it would hurt you and I'm sorry, okay? You have no idea how much I wish I'd kept my mouth shut."

"You should have," Katya said.

"Yeah," Alaska said bitterly, "I should have pretended not to give a shit like you've apparently been doing for four fucking years."

"So I should have tried to break up your relationship?"

They both just breathed for a few seconds, and then Alaska laughed sharply and said, "I'd have been better off if you had."

"That wasn't my job!" As if Katya wouldn't have saved Alaska from that shitshow if she'd had the chance, love or no love.

"Of course it wasn't your job! It was a joke! I should have saved it for later."

"Later," Katya said. "Right."

"We can fix this, Brian," Alaska said with determination that seemed to quaver a little. "I know we can. I'll reschedule for a later flight tomorrow and come up there for a couple hours and- "

Katya's heart raced again. She held up a hand like Alaska was right there in front of her, and she actually stamped her foot on the pavement. "No! I don't want you here! You fucking broke me last time!"

That was not a secret Katya had ever intended to disclose. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" she said to herself.

" **I** broke you?" Alaska was saying. " **I** broke- when?"

"Fuck!" Katya said again.

"Do you mean- " Alaska stopped and took a breath while she put the pieces together, too fucking smart as always. "What, the last time we fucked?" she asked. "When you went to rehab the next day? You said that wasn't me! I asked you, and you said- "

"Of course it was you!" Suddenly Katya was crying again. "Of course it was!" 

"I don't understand," Alaska said. "I thought that night was- "

"That night was a mystical fucking experience with a guy I was completely in love with- "

"I didn't know that! I didn't have all the information!" 

"-and it was the highest I'd ever been without drugs, and I knew I could never have you!"

There was shocked silence on the other end of the line. Katya heard cheers from the baseball diamond nearby and resented every one of them.

"But you **can** ," Alaska said finally. It was achingly hopeful. "I'm here. You can- "

"No, I can't!"

" **Why?** Even just as a friend, you can have me!"

Katya couldn't make her mouth form an answer. She said, "I don't have time for this," and hung up before hearing Alaska's response.

xxx

The next few days, while Alaska left voicemail after voicemail that started with apologetic concern and progressed to truly pissed off, Katya felt like she was watching her life on a cheap old TV. There was white noise; the colors wouldn't adjust correctly; the brightness flickered in and out. 

She told her friend she didn't want to talk about it anymore. She told her mother, "I'm in love, and it **sucks**." She had trouble walking through the bar because she wanted a whole bottle of gin, and she didn't even like gin.

She wasn't going to do it. She wasn't going to throw her life in the crapper because of Alaska fucking Thunderfuck. And fuck Alaska anyway, for making Katya finally remember that sex could be sublime.

Alaska's last voicemail was a vicious, "If you're never going to talk to me again, you at least owe me a fucking explanation." Katya shook as she listened to it. Then she listened again, and shook some more.

That night she forgot her lyrics on stage--lyrics to a song she'd known for years, a song she'd performed on that little tour with Alaska--and after thoroughly kicking herself, she marched upstairs, retreated into a corner of her living room, and huddled on the floor with her phone.

She put it on speaker, so Alaska's voice could float in the air in her apartment and Katya could breathe it in later. That voice was like a deep, curving, melodic bassline that buried itself in Katya's hips. She didn't want to forget.

"Fucking finally," Alaska said when she answered. The line was quiet otherwise; Katya had hoped the timing was right to reach her in her hotel room in Baltimore, and it seemed to have worked.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that," Katya said. "And that last phone call. It was out of line."

"I'm sorry, too." There were already tears in Alaska's voice, and she sounded exhausted. "But fuck you for making me worry like that."

"I should have picked up when you called."

"Which time?"

Katya was too worked up to determine if that was humor or anger. She went with humor. "Don't make me laugh, I'm wearing a fucking corset."

"That's never stopped you before. What time is it? Are you in the middle of a show?"

"Mmm."

"Look, I don't want to push you into anything," Alaska said. "I just want you in my life. And I need to know you're okay. That you didn't go straight to a dealer and- "

"I didn't. And you **are** in my life. But- " Katya's breath hitched, and she stopped. A horrible ballad was booming from downstairs, and Katya only had twenty minutes before she had to get back to the show. 

Alaska sniffled and asked quietly, "But what, Brian?" 

"It's like," Katya said slowly. She'd been thinking about this analogy for days. "It's like dangling a rabbit in front of a greyhound who can't run."

"Are you the rabbit or the greyhound?" Alaska asked with a sad chuckle.

"He's got a broken leg, the poor greyhound. It's in a cast. He can't run. He wants that rabbit so fucking bad. But he knows it'll hurt even more if he goes for it. And he can't."

"I don't understand," Alaska said. "What does that mean?" 

"Addiction for me is not like addiction for you, Justin."

"What do you- "

"I can't just decide not to use, like you can. I told you, I have to work at it every fucking day. And I've been working so hard, and I can't put that at risk, even for-" You, she was going to say. _Even for you._

Alaska was silent for a minute, and Katya heard a wet sigh. "No," Alaska said, and she was definitely crying now. Just hearing it was excruciating. "Of course you can't. If I would make that harder, then I don't- How would I make that harder? I want to help you, but I don't always know what you need. Am I doing it wrong?"

Katya had to ignore the pain and confusion in Alaska's voice. Getting angry felt safer. "It hasn't even been a fucking year!" she said, instead of answering.

"A year since I broke up with Aaron? I know I don't have a good track record, but- "

"Jesus, it's not about Sharon Needles and it's not about your fucking track record!" Katya felt like her brain was about to blow. "I'm crazy about you no matter how fucked up you are! I always have been!"

While Katya was ranting, Alaska had figured it out. "Sober," she said. "A year since you've been sober. You're supposed to wait a year before major life decisions."

"And you," Katya said. "It hasn't been a year since you got clean, either. I know you don't get the program, but I can't live without it and I can't freefall like you. This is the longest I've gone in years."

"But then maybe," Alaska asked delicately, full of that damn hope again, "when the year is up?"

"I can't think that far ahead!" Anger was definitely safer. "I can barely manage next week on a good day!"

"Yeah, I get that," Alaska said. "I totally get that."

"You think you understand," Katya said. "But you don't."

"But I'm so proud of you, and I **want** to get it. And I understand now why you can't, I do. It's okay."

The anger slid off at the resignation in Alaska's voice. Katya sighed and said, "I just never thought you'd...." She let that hang, afraid that just saying it would make her give in.

"Well, I do," Alaska said. 

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Alaska said, but she was still crying, and hearing it still hurt. "Neither of us is in a good place for this now. You're right."

"I have to go," Katya said. It wasn't because she was about to cry, too. She had another number to perform. "I need to not talk to you for a while, okay? I need to go."

"How- " Alaska was panicking now. Katya heard it and hated it. "How long?"

"I don't **know** , Justin. I don't know anything."

"Okay," Alaska said through a sob. "I understand. I'm here if you need me."

"I have to go," Katya said again. 

She ended the call, threw her phone across the room, and cried until she could pull herself together enough to fix her makeup and smile for the bridesmaids and pretend she wasn't broken.

xxx

Alaska just cried, alone in her hotel room. There was no one she could fake a smile for, no one she wanted to call. Only Katya.

xxx

The girls complained sometimes about touring. 

Alaska never did. Or she never had, other than a few jokes about limp dicks on stage.

She loved being on stage, and she loved meeting fans, even though the meet-and-greet format was a bit much sometimes for a former shy little boy. She loved meeting local queens she'd never heard of. She didn't even mind the airports, or the buses, or the cramped dressing rooms. 

What she minded now, nine days after she'd last spoken to Katya, was the empty hotel rooms.

Most of the girls filled theirs with booze and drugs and trade. Alaska didn't do the first two anymore and didn't much want the last, no matter how lonely she was.

So much trade, so many perfect and imperfect dicks in every direction, and she wasn't interested in any of them.

Alaska was stubborn as fuck. She always had been. If she wanted something, she wouldn't stop going after it. But now she wanted some **one**. Someone she loved and couldn't have. ( _And I knew I could never have you,_ Katya had said.)

She cared too much for Katya to disrespect her wishes, or jeopardize her sobriety or her sanity. But she missed Katya so badly it could still make her cry, after shows when she was worn out and had skipped dinner again like an idiot. 

She typed out so many texts she couldn't send that in the end, she had to delete Katya from her contacts. She knew the number by heart; she'd know if (not when) Katya called. But she needed to have extra steps to keep herself from doing something stupid on a whim.

If she was going to do something stupid, it was at least going to be well thought out beforehand.

She'd tried one Grindr hookup anyway, to make herself stop thinking for a few minutes and to see if she'd changed her mind, but she hadn't. It was just a physical release. She was male, or at least on the male side of the gender spectrum, so the release should have been enough, right?

It wasn't, and she should have known this about herself. Without an emotional connection, a pair of dicks now was just...a pair of dicks.

So the trade didn't work, and the hotel rooms were all empty, and her friends on tour were all drunk every night, and Alaska couldn't talk to the one person who, she had realized at some tear-filled point, had been her emotional support being for at least two years. 

She'd driven Katya away. She'd driven away the only human who would always listen, and now she was fucked.

She could only bother her Pittsburgh friends and her college friends so many times, and she didn't want to confess to them how much she'd fucked up. She didn't have LA friends yet. She didn't want to discuss it with any of the girls on tour. Her mom was no help; her mom worried whenever Alaska was upset, or else told her she was upset over nothing.

So she was feeling sorry for herself in front of the television, in another empty hotel room, when she got a surprise phone call. It wasn't the surprise she'd been hoping for.

"I have pizza," Sharon said. "Let me in."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'll eat the whole thing myself if you force me to. Don't think I won't." 

Alaska heard a boot kick the door, and got up off the bed with a sigh and an eye roll. 

"It's our night off. Don't you have better things to do?" she asked once Sharon was inside.

"Nope. You are the most important thing on my to-do list today."

"Why?"

Sharon opened the box to reveal all of Alaska's favorite toppings, which almost made Alaska cry again.

"Take one," Sharon ordered, before dropping the pizza and a six-pack of expensive lemon seltzer on the desk. She tore at a slice and handed it off to Alaska. "Take this too," she said as she freed one can.

Alaska just stood there with her hands full and the slice drooping dangerously. "What the fuck, Aaron?"

"I," Sharon announced with pizza in her mouth, "have had three different people this week, including your mother, ask me if you're okay. Eat. You're going to make a mess."

"My **mother**?"

"She says it's harder to get details out of you now that you're sober."

"Great," Alaska said drily. "I finally have a filter and my own mother doesn't recognize me."

"She took it back right away, relax. But she's worried. **Eat.**."

Alaska sat heavily in the desk chair and did as ordered. She caught the cheese with her tongue just before it slid off, and ended up with half a slice in her mouth at once. It was lukewarm.

"So why are people calling me?" Sharon asked.

Alaska chewed, and swallowed, and took a drink. "You know," she said, "privacy was nice. I liked privacy."

"Whatever. Talk to me."

Alaska shook her head, and chewed some more. 

"I knew you were down, but I thought you were just tired and maybe homesick. And sober."

"I **am** tired and homesick and sober." 

Sharon continued. "And you haven't been going out with us- "

"Because I don't drink anymore!"

"Doesn't mean you have to lock yourself away like a hermit. Talk."

Alaska sighed and dropped the crust back in the box. She could either tell Sharon now, or she could have Sharon hound her until she gave in.

"You know I can do this all night," Sharon said.

"You can't. You'll need a drink first."

"Fuck off," Sharon said cheerfully. "I'm not the world's best boyfriend, but I am in the running for the world's best best friend, and I'm not going anywhere." She took another slice.

"Okay." Alaska thought for a couple minutes about how to say it, and decided on, "I fucked things up with one of my best friends, and I don't know if he'll ever talk to me again."

Sharon shrugged. "If he's really a friend, he'll be back."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me."

"It's not worth telling," Alaska said, stalling. She was going to tell Sharon eventually. Putting it off was stalling.

"Sure it is, if you're this upset. And you look fucking miserable, by the way."

"That's because I am. Okay," she said again, with determination and another sigh. "First I should tell you that it's Katya."

"The hot- "

"Don't call her that. Oh my God, I'm going to kill you."

Sharon laughed, not unkindly. "I'm not her favorite person, huh?"

"No, but that's my fault, not yours."

"Badmouthing me, were you?"

"At one point, yes."

"At a hundred points, I'm sure," Sharon said, "and I'm sure I deserved every one of them."

"You did. And I deserved whatever you said about me."

"Agreed. So what did you do?"

"Fuck. Fuck you for making me talk about this." Alaska took a long drink to consider her words. "I need you to know that when I was with you, I was with **you**. I didn't see her like that at all."

"Oh, I know. When you cheated, you wanted me to know you'd cheated. Wait." Sharon's eyes widened and she drew in a delighted breath. "Are you a thing now? The old hookup to boyfriends trope? That's so cute!"

Alaska groaned, and aggressively bit into her second slice.

"Or is that the problem?" Sharon said.

Tears swelled in Alaska's eyes. She was a tear machine lately. It was disgusting. "We're not. I wanted more, but he's legit in no condition to give me that right now. And I should have known that, but I asked anyway, and now I can't even call him to find out if he's dead."

"Whoa. That escalated quickly."

"Fuck you. He's in the program and I should have given him more time, and oh, God, I just hope I didn't screw with his head too much and make him do something awful."

"Even if he does do something awful, you can't blame yourself." Before Alaska could counter that, Sharon asked, "What did he say? Does he think you're repulsive, or what?"

"No! And that makes it worse. He said he fucking loved me."

Sharon seemed to take a moment to parse that. "He loves you," she said.

Alaska wiped at her eyes, and nodded.

"And you love him?"

Alaska nodded again. 

"So it's just bad timing," Sharon decided.

"Yeah, with the possibility of an overdose on top."

"Honey, you are not special enough to ruin anyone's life, give yourself a break."

Alaska scowled at the word choice. Katya had also said ruined. Katya had said Alaska was _special_ enough to send her back to rehab. "You have no idea how unhelpful that is," she told Sharon. 

"Hey, I'm here to unhelp," Sharon said. "Why can't you call him?"

"He said he needed time and I completely respect that, but I miss him so much and I'm so fucking scared. He's the person I usually talk to when shit goes bad."

"So that's how he knows what a terrible person I am."

"Jesus," Alaska said. "Either go away or say something useful."

Sharon actually looked thoughtful. "Is there a mutual friend you could ask? Just to see if he's okay?"

"I know his drag friends a little bit. But I don't want to tell them if he hasn't."

"I think you should be allowed to ask if someone you care about is still alive."

"But getting clean is such an accomplishment for him! And it's still work. Like, meetings every day work."

"If he's in meetings every day he has to be able to handle a quick hello. A text? A postcard?"

"I don't know," Alaska said, but an idea started to take form her brain, and a little spark of hope. "I hate to admit this," she told Sharon, "but I think you actually helped."

"You look like I made you eat raw meat. Stop it."

Alaska laughed. "This is me looking grateful. It doesn't happen very often."

"No fucking shit." Sharon laughed, too. "Better?"

"A little. I don't feel like jumping out that 14th-floor window anymore."

"Good. Now call your damn mother and tell her you're not dying before she drives out here." Sharon motioned for Alaska to take the last slice. "And tell her next time she should call the hot hooker instead."

"You're such an asshole," Alaska said fondly. "But thanks."

xxx

Katya didn't answer the doorbell on the first ring. Or the second, or the third. She'd only gotten rid of her trick half an hour ago. He'd insisted on staying the night and paying for every hour, and she was too emotionally wrung out to fight it. So she'd slept badly, and she didn't want him coming back on top of that.

By the fourth ring, she was annoyed enough to look out her window. She saw a delivery van with a florist's logo parked illegally, which was the only way to park on her street, and a delivery guy walking back to it. 

Curiosity got the better of her, and she yanked up the window. The cold air blasted her face. "I think you've got the wrong address," she called.

He spun around, confused. She opened the screen and waved an arm.

"Brian McCook?"

"There is no way those are for me."

"If your name is Brian McCook, they're for you."

"From **who**?"

"I'm not allowed to open the envelope. Would you mind coming down and signing for these so I can get on my way?"

"Oh. Right," she said, suddenly aware that she was giving him a hard time, and he'd probably already had enough of that today.

She thundered down the stairs--luckily she was already dressed, albeit in a paint stained t-shirt and torn denim cutoffs--and opened the door. 

Up close, the arrangement looked less intimidating than it had from above. It was neat and tasteful, in a comically oversized coffee mug rather than a vase she'd never use.

"This is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me, and weird things happen to me all the time," she told the driver as she signed her name. She was too fascinated to feel the wind assaulting the entryway. She went to reach for the card, but stopped and said, "Oh! Wait! I have tips! I mean, I'll give you a tip! Hold on!"

She ran back upstairs, grabbed a handful of wadded up ones from the show the night before, and ran down again to hold them out. She didn't know how much it was, but there were a lot of bills. "To make up for all the other assholes you'll get today," she said.

"Thanks," he said. He stared at the mess in his hand before trying to squeeze it into a pocket that was clearly too small. "Uh--thank you. Have a good day."

She waved him off and had to force herself to carry the flowers upstairs, carefully, and put them on a solid surface, carefully. Then she tore open the envelope so fast that she almost tore the card, too.

"I hope the flowers are okay, and I really hope you're okay. I just want you to know I'm thinking about you. -Justin"

Katya had to sit down, like a noblewoman in a Tolstoy novel. Her heart was pounding. She started sweating. She read the card nine times.

Alaska was thinking about her? Alaska was **thinking** about her. 

Alaska was worried about her. Of course she was, and Katya kicked herself for not seeing that earlier. Her sponsor would tell her that she had done the best she could at the time, and that the best she could do was all she could ask of herself. She did the best she could every fucking day.

But Alaska **was** worried, and she must have thought about what to write for hours if not days before ordering the flowers online. And if she was checking the website, she might already know they'd been delivered.

Katya didn't let herself think for hours, or even minutes. She opened her email--she didn't feel quite ready for direct contact, she still felt like she was balancing on a knife blade at all times--and typed, "I'm okay and I'm thinking about you too. Thanks for the flowers but not for ruining my reputation as a badass with all the guys down the sports bar. Brian."

Then she sat back on the sofa and kicked her legs in the air and laughed, because Alaska was **thinking** about her, and maybe Katya hadn't fucked everything up, after all. 

xxx

Aside from one more short email ("McCook Early Warning System enabled to inform you of any existential threats to my person. Thank Needles.") Alaska didn't hear from Katya again until the day before Christmas Eve. 

As they all trouped in for rehearsal and sound check, cranky and grubby and cold, the club manager said, "Alaska, we got a package for you a couple days ago." He held up a small priority mail box.

"What?" Alaska said. "You got a what?"

"Beats me, but here it is."

"I don't," she started. But no. She did understand, or she thought she might. She took the package eagerly and smiled at the return address. "I told her never to mail me here," she said as she tore into it.

She heard Michelle saying, "Are you sure that's a good idea, sweetie?" as the girls and the crew crowded around her. They all needed some excitement, and they'd all be thrilled to get packages from home.

"Go away," she told them, but she was grinning so wide they all ignored her.

Inside piles of red tissue paper was a little plush greyhound. It looked a bit like a kangaroo. But it had a tag on it that said, in Katya's art school handwriting, "Hi, my name is Grey H. Ound."

"Oh, my God," Alaska said without thinking, "I have to find a stuffed rabbit!"

"Like taxidermy?" Jinkx said, and "I'm just going to assume that means something to you and get on with my life," Willam said.

Sharon stayed near her as the others dispersed. "Is that?"

Alaska nodded. She was blushing, and she couldn't stop. "Fuck," she said, touching her cheek with a hand still chilled from being outside. "I wasn't this much of a little girl when I was a little boy."

"Send me an invitation to the wedding," Sharon said.

Alaska told her to fuck off, but she had to fight a smile through the entire rehearsal.


	5. 2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, I'm sorry to say, is the last chapter. I'm sad to let it go because I love this story so much, but I'm excited to get back to work on the sequel. I can't 100% promise it'll ever get finished, but I really want to finish it.
> 
> Thanks for your patience, everybody. I hope it's worth the wait!
> 
> Trigger warning: Sharon Needles, but she only has a few lines.

There were more gifts, but no words, in the new year. The rabbit, which Alaska had to order online because she didn't have time to hunt one down, and a plastic horse like the ones little Alaska had tried to steal from her cousin's house, and been told off for by her father. Had she told Katya that story?

There was a bracelet loaded down with hand charms Alaska had found on Etsy after much searching--she was nervous about that one. But Katya responded with a horse skull necklace, and Alaska felt better. As long as there was a joke involved, gifts seemed to be fine.

She started sending postcards from wherever she was, and just signed them with her name. Katya sent punny, artsy cards that all seemed to be locally made, also signed with just her name. Whatever store Katya bought them in, Alaska wanted to go there the next time she was in Boston. She hoped Katya would show her the way, but she didn't dare say that, yet.

xxx

And then one day there was a card from Katya. ("All-Porpoise Greeting Card," it said, and the cute drawings of porpoises in party hats shouldn't have made Alaska's heart melt as much as they did.) On the inside, Katya had written in her big, neat cursive--she was born to sign autographs--"Miss you."

Alaska fell into tears when she read it. In her life she'd cried more over Katya Zamolodchikova than she had over anyone but Sharon, and the score must be getting close now.

Katya had been following Alaska's tour schedule perfectly, always finding the right club or hotel. But this card was at Alaska's house, waiting for her when she got home. It was postmarked two weeks earlier. Katya was so afraid to say it that she hadn't even sent the thing to Alaska directly. She'd sent it when she knew Alaska was away, an emotional buffer.

But she **had** said it. She was confident enough to say it, which was new and wonderful.

Alaska laugh-cried until she got the card wet, and then she cried over getting it wet. She took a picture in case she ruined it, and so she could remember it anytime she wanted.

She decided to give as good as she got. There were still half a dozen postcards in her luggage. She threw aside the dirty clothes and stinking costumes to get at them. She addressed four cards and wrote one word on each.

Then she walked straight to the post office, before she lost her nerve.

xxx

The cards came on different days and out of order. Katya's curiosity was so piqued by the first one that she picked up her phone and sent a text before she knew she was doing it.

"Bitch?"

"Oh, no, did you see that one first?" Alaska replied seconds later. "Just wait, it'll make sense, I promise."

Katya didn't reply but waited for the other cards, which said, in order of arrival, "you," "more," and "Miss." 

It did make sense. It made so much fucking sense she had to pick up the phone.

Alaska answered immediately, and breathlessly. "Brian? Are you all right? What's wrong?"

Katya felt awful for making her panic. She reminded herself, hard, that Alaska wanted to hear from her. Obviously, Alaska wanted to hear from her.

"Nothing," she said. "I-" She should have planned this out. She always planned difficult phone calls. It was just that talking to Alaska hadn't used to be difficult. She'd forgotten, for a moment, that they hadn't heard one another's voices since October. "I just wanted to thank you for the cards," she said. "But you sound really busy, and I- "

"Please don't hang up," Alaska said quickly, maybe even frantically. "The cards were--I'm sorry you got the bitch one first. I should have thought about that. But I really meant it."

There was hustle and bustle on the other end of the line, and maybe a loudspeaker, and somebody said, "Is that your mystery man?" in the background. Alaska shushed them.

"I meant it, too," Katya said.

"Fuck. I want to talk to you so badly. **So** badly. But I am literally boarding a plane right now."

Katya heard the same background voice again, maybe Jinkx. "This is us," the voice said.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Alaska said. "Tell the pilot not to take off yet."

"I'm sorry," Katya said. "I don't want to- "

"No! I want you to! Whatever you were going to say. I want that."

"Please pretend I inserted a clever quip right here," Katya said, after a moment.

Alaska laughed. Fuck, Katya had missed that laugh. It was so easy and so warm and so deep. Sometimes she dreamed about that laugh and woke up with a hard-on. 

"Can I call you after we land?" Alaska asked. "It's okay if the answer is no."

"I," Katya said. She didn't deserve Alaska and she should have expected that question, but she hadn't expected to call in the first place. "I'll text you, okay?"

Katya heard more shuffling, and Alaska said, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'll text you," Katya said, and ended the call.

xxx

Alaska put her phone on airplane mode and sat back in her seat, sighing a sigh that was both joyful and fearful. 

"He's still crazy about you, isn't he?" Jinkx said. 

Sharon poked her head between the seats, behind them. "He's definitely crazy."

"You met him once!" Alaska laughed. She knew Sharon sensed her nerves and wanted to help, so she laughed.

"There's only one dick of separation between us," Sharon said. "I feel a bond."

"She means they both love you," Jinkx said. "She's just too much of a dick to say it."

"She's definitely a dick," Alaska said, winking at Jinkx. 

Sharon said a friendly, "Fuck you," and disappeared.

Alaska wanted to squeal and scream. Her cheeks were hot. "I'm a fucking teenage girl," she said.

"Don't knock teenage girls," Jinkx said. "They're contributing at least half of our rent money."

"Like a teenage queer who just came out and found his first boyfriend?" Alaska suggested.

"That's better."

xxx

The text from Katya was in fact many texts. Alaska had turned her cell service back on the second the wheels hit the tarmac, and she sat, transfixed, while all the other passengers were standing and stretching and getting their bags and sighing impatiently.

 **Katya:** Sorry. Talking to anybody is still a lot, you know? Nothing to do with you.  
**Katya:** You know that stage of recovery where you just don't have enough brain to spare for other people?  
**Katya:** Or maybe you don't, I don't know.  
**Katya:** The thing is  
**Katya:** and don't panic, because it's over and I'm safe!  
**Katya:** I went back to the loony bin again in December.

Alaska gasped loudly enough that both Jinkx, still sitting next to her, and Sharon, standing over her behind the seat, asked what was wrong.

 **Katya:** No relapse! Just a refresher course!

Alaska held up a hand that meant, 'Leave me alone.'

 **Katya:** because I have to get this right.  
**Katya:** And I'm feeling really positive about it this time.  
**Katya:** It's going to be hard fucking work. Everyday and forever  
**Katya:** but I know how to do the work now.  
**Katya:** And I need practice before I'm ready to be in the same space with somebody I actually like.

Alaska started to tear up, but she couldn't say which of the dozen emotions she was feeling had brought it on.

 **Katya:** Like a lot of practice.  
**Katya:** So I wanted to say thank you for the cards, because they're lovely, and I really do miss you.  
**Katya:** That was a lot of words, sorry. Thanks for listening.

And at the end, she'd added a yellow heart.

Alaska covered her mouth with a fist. She couldn't process it all now; she didn't have the time or the privacy to process it all now.

She swallowed, closing her eyes for just a second, and gave in to the smile that was warring with her tears. Then she gave in to all the strangers in the aisles, and her friends watching her with concern, and stood up. 

She wanted to get to a hotel room as soon as possible. But Katya would be checking her phone for a reply. So as she walked through the terminal, blindly following Manila who was right in front of her, she sent a yellow heart herself, and typed quickly.

 **Alaska:** There's no such thing as too many words from you. Thank you for telling me. I'm here when you want me.

Roxxxy was suddenly walking next to her. "Hey," she said quietly. "Are you sure this guy isn't jerking you around?"

Word spread fast. Roxxxy had been nowhere near her on the plane. Fucking drag queens.

Her thumb still poised over send, Alaska whipped her head up to look at her friend. "Why don't you try getting sober and tell me how easy it is?" she said.

"Right," Roxxxy said. "Talk to you later."

"Fuck," Alaska said. "I'm sorry, that was- "

"He makes you feel a lot?"

"You have no fucking idea," Alaska said.

Roxxxy gave her a little smile and squeezed her arm, and sped up again to walk with the other girls. 

Alaska, now with butterflies of misery and guilt in her stomach, went back to her text.

She read it over, changed _when you want me_ to _when you're ready to talk_ , and finally clicked send.

She didn't expect a response, but Katya immediately gave her one.

"Soon," was all it said.

xxx

A few days later, Alaska got a card that said the same thing: "Soon." The photo on the front was of the museum they'd visited over the summer. 

She wished she had the t-shirt she'd bought for Katya on the website after that trip, but it was at home, and she wouldn't be home for another week. So she went back to the site and ordered another with a different design, and had it shipped across town, to Katya's house. Then she waited, hoping the gift wouldn't be too much.

xxx

"Soon" came a lot sooner than Alaska had expected. 

The text arrived in what was the middle of the night for Katya. For Alaska it was morning, it was another generic hotel, and she was drowsily packing for the last flight of this tour.

"Hi," Katya's text said.

Alaska's phone was across the room, and not knowing who the text was from--since she'd deleted Katya's phone number and therefore her ringtone--she didn't hurry to read it. But as soon as she did, her heart clawed up into her throat and she responded right away. "Good morning," she wrote, and, "Did you get a package?"

"I'll look for it," Katya replied, and right away Alaska had a feeling something was wrong. Katya normally couldn't stand that kind of suspense.

"I'm sorry," the next text said. "It's really sucky of me to call you about this when we haven't been talking."

Call her about **what**? Alaska thought. She revved right up to panic but steadied her hands and typed only, "You can tell me anything."

"One of my friends ODed and offed himself."

"Shit, I'm sorry," Alaska wrote, her brain flooding with both relief and dismay. "Did he do it on purpose? Are you okay?"

"They don't know if it was on purpose. He didn't leave a note."

"Fuck, Brian, I'm so sorry."

"Thanks." And after a pause, Katya added, "I don't know what to do with myself."

Alaska wanted to fawn over her and thank her for texting and say I'm always here, always. But she didn't think that was what Katya needed.

"Were you close?" she asked instead.

"We used to be. We tried dating for a while. It was a long time ago."

Telling herself to wait, to give Katya time to think and type, Alaska sat on the edge of the unmade hotel bed and clenched her free hand, to keep her fingers quiet.

"He used needles," Katya wrote. "He was a fucking bonehead and he used needles."

"Meth?" Alaska let herself ask.

"Slamming fucking crystal meth. So stupid."

Shooting up was something Katya had been very careful not to get into, thank God. She'd never mentioned having friends who did, but for a long time, she'd barely mentioned her life at all. Because Alaska had been too selfish to ask.

"You have to cut them off when they do that," Katya wrote.

After a minute or two of silence, Alaska asked, "So you didn't see him for a while?"

"I ran into him a couple years ago and he hardly knew me. His teeth were falling out." The three dots that said Katya was typing stayed for a long time. Finally she wrote, "I asked him how he was doing, and then I ran away."

"You can't do much more than that," Alaska wrote.

"I know, you can't help them until they're ready."

Alaska thought about how to respond and ended up typing, "It's not your fault that you were ready before he was."

"No, I don't think it's my fault," Katya wrote. "I'm just sad. I knew him from college. He was really talented before."

Alaska made a note to ask what kind of art he made, when Katya was feeling better. But for now she wrote, "Needles take talent away." Shooting coke did the same thing. Alaska had never tried that, either. She and Katya had each made at least one good decision in the depths of addiction.

Katya replied quickly. "Needles take people away."

"Yeah, they do."

"Do you want to make a bad Sharon joke right now?" 

What? Of course she didn't! "No!" she typed.

"I do," Katya wrote. "You injected Needles for three years but beat the odds. Don't do Needles, the withdrawal will kill you."

"Oh, my God." 

"Freebasing Needles is an instant high, but the crash is a bitch. Needles leads to hepatitis."

"It wasn't hepatitis. It was gonorrhea," Alaska wrote.

"Needles gave you gonorrhea?"

Alaska sent a shrug emoji, and Katya replied with a tongue sticking out. 

The three dots flashed for a while, and then went blank for so long that Alaska finished packing. Give Katya time, she told herself again.

She was making a last check of the bathroom when her phone rang with the same number. Her heart jumped again.

"Brian?" she asked.

"I'm sorry about the jokes," Katya said. 

"I like your jokes! Even the bad ones."

"I can't." Was Katya crying? "I can't do what I did to him, with you."

"I don't know what that means," Alaska said. 

"Cut you out. Not talk to you."

Alaska thought carefully before saying, "You're talking to me now."

Katya sniffed, and sighed, and asked, "You have a flight in a couple hours, right?"

"Yes." 

"If it crashed."

"It's not going to crash," Alaska said automatically. She'd told her family the same thing, many times.

"Flying is safer than driving, whatever. But if it did. And I hadn't talked to you in a long time."

The thought scared Alaska, too. She sat on the closed toilet seat, in this conversation for the long haul even if it meant she had to reschedule her flight. ""Oh, Brian." 

"I don't know what I would do," Katya said tearily. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Alaska said, and trying to be upbeat despite wanting to cry herself, she said again, "We're talking right now."

"Was it awful? When I cut you off?"

"At first it was. But I know you had to take care of yourself. I need you to be safe even if you never call me again."

Katya didn't respond right away. Then she said, "I need to call my sponsor. I should've dumped all this on them before I dumped it on you."

"No, I- " She hesitated. "I love that you called. I love that you told me. I just wish I could help more."

"I will talk to you again soon, okay?"

"When you can," Alaska said. She knew she'd be desperate until she heard Katya's voice again. "Go. Make the call."

"Thank you," Katya said, and hung up.

Alaska said, "Fuck," to the empty hotel room. 

She had just a few minutes before they were supposed to meet downstairs. She thought about rescheduling. She thought about staying there, alone, in an unfamiliar place, worrying and waiting. She thought about changing her reservation from LAX to BOS.

She remembered Katya shouting, _No, I don't want you here!_ back in the fall. She wouldn't be welcome in Boston. But they'd at least be in the same country code again by nighttime, if she got off her ass right now. 

She got up, made one last check around the room, and left. 

xxx

Katya talked to her sponsor, and called her therapist to see if she could get in early, and went to a meeting, and came home to get ready to perform that night.

There was a package by her door, and she remembered that Alaska had asked about it. She knew the logo on the box. Alaska had noticed; Alaska was specifically replying to the last card Katya had sent. 

She called, but it went straight to voicemail. So she texted instead. "Thank you!" she wrote. "It's perfect. Call when you're free."

It was the first time she'd given Alaska permission to reach out, but it felt like the right time. Katya felt balanced, despite or because of her breakdown that morning. She felt like she was getting where she needed to be, like she could finally see the steps ahead. She'd taken a lot of steps and had a lot left to take, but keeping Alaska in her life was a major part of the path she wanted to follow.

Exactly what role Alaska should play in her life was still a question. She couldn't see around that bend yet.

xxx

"You got it!" Alaska said breathlessly, many hours later. "Sorry, just landed."

"I'm wearing it right now! Thanks. For this morning, too."

"Are you feeling better? You sound better."

"I'm feeling stronger," Katya decided. "Now tell me all the tour gossip, right now."

xxx

They spoke a lot, after that. Katya usually initiated it, but Alaska tested the waters and called Katya, too, a few times. It was starting to feel comfortable again, talking to Katya.

But they never really talked **about** anything. None of it meant a damn thing.

The conversations were all sterile and lifeless, bordering on small talk. It was snowing in Boston and sunny in LA; Alaska was catching up on sleep from tour; Katya drank too much coffee; Katya's drag friends were doing stupid things; Alaska's drag friends were doing different stupid things. Season 6 was airing and that was always safe to talk about. She knew that Katya had been accepted to grad school and that she seemed excited about it, but the rest was an empty space.

A few days before her birthday, Alaska ran downstairs to check the mail as soon as she saw the postal carrier leave the building. She had nothing else to do; this was the sum of the day's excitement. 

She found something unexpected, though: a box from Katya. She schooled her face and took it back upstairs, as much as she wanted to tear it open there in the lobby. When she shut her door, she sat with her back against it, unable to make it any further inside without investigating, and tossed the bills on the floor.

There was a card that said on the front, "Thank you for putting up with my" followed by a big rainbow poop emoji. 

There was a beat-up copy of _The Unofficial Gay Manual_ with the price ($.50) from a used bookstore on the inside cover, along with a note that said, _Just in case you have questions. -B_.

And then there was a little tube-shaped package wrapped tightly in tissue paper and twisted at the ends. She unrolled it to find--four eyebrow pencils?

Two were still in plastic and were the same brand and shades she was currently using. The other two were sharpened down with only half left on one and a quarter left on the other. The names were worn off, but she was pretty sure it was a drugstore brand she'd given up years ago. She fiddled with them a bit, opened them and drew lines on the back of her hand. When she saw the actual colors, she remembered.

She grabbed her phone out of her pocket and said drily, when Katya answered, "I don't think returning stolen property counts as a present."

"Restitution!" Katya said happily.

"You've had those all this time **and** you remembered where you put them?"

"To be fair, it is a very small apartment. Have you read the book yet?"

Alaska laughed. She was hot, she noticed. "I read it before my voice changed. I'm guessing it hasn't aged well?"

"It absolutely has not. But, you know, for a curious young man such as yourself..."

"Fuck off," Alaska said brightly.

She let Katya cackle at her own joke, but she bit her tongue. She wanted to ask when Katya had first read it, whether she'd bought it or been gifted it or hid in a corner of the library to read it like Alaska had. She wanted to ask so many things. 

But what she wanted more than any present was for Katya to actually **talk** to her. Saying that felt manipulative, though. So Alaska didn't.

Still, it was progress, Alaska thought. They'd reached a point where she could call Katya if she needed a laugh, if no one was awake in her time zone, if she'd had a bad day--as long as she remembered not to mention the bad day. 

Just hearing Katya's voice was a gift, as ephemeral as it was. She needed to remember that.

Once they'd hung up she switched to her photos app and flipped through the pictures from their trip together last summer, to remember what it had been like before, and stayed right there by the door for a long time.

xxx

Tour dates and invitations had dried up while season 6 was airing. Alaska was stuck at home, performing locally as often as she could and thinking way too much. She'd started making video reactions to the new episodes. It was something to do, and something she'd never have time for on the road. But what she wanted to do was call Katya, all day, every day, and she wouldn't let herself. 

She was lying in bed in the middle of the day, and Katya was walking outside somewhere. Katya was chattering about the cold, and about the time she'd performed with Bianca Del Rio in New York. 

"She read me so hard into the ground I winked out of existence for a second," Katya said proudly.

It was funny. It was a good story. 

It wasn't about Katya at all. 

Alaska was in love with this bitch. She was hopelessly in love with this bitch, and not only did Katya not believe that, Katya wouldn't even talk to her. Really talk, the way they did before Alaska fucked it up.

She wanted to say, _Just talk to me like it's me!_ but she knew better. She said, "Hey, Brian?"

She could hear the amusement in Katya's voice. "Yes, Justin?"

"Are we back in the trick stories stage?"

"That wasn't a trick story."

It might as well have been. "I don't know what's going on in your life. I worry."

"Oh," Katya said. "I- " And she stopped.

"I want to give you all the space you need, I want you to be healthy and safe. But I don't actually know if you're okay."

"I'm okay."

"I knew you were going to say that," Alaska said. She got out of bed and wandered out onto her little balcony. It had been pouring for a few days--that time of year in Los Angeles--and the dark day felt a bit like Pennsylvania. A few raindrops hit her, but she didn't care.

"But I am okay. What do you want me to say?"

Alaska pressed her back against the stucco wall to ground herself, but she wanted to bang her head on it. "Your friend," she said, and she knew the irritation was coming through in her voice. She let it. "You haven't said another word about him. I don't know if you've dealt with it, or if you're avoiding dealing with it."

"Dealt with that," Katya said flippantly. "Avoiding dealing with everything else."

"Right." Alaska couldn't disguise her disappointment.

"No, that's a lie," Katya said. "Sorry. I **am** dealing with everything else."

"Okay," Alaska said, giving up. "That's good."

"No," Katya said again. "I'm not trying to bullshit you. I'm dealing with it and I'm doing okay. And there are so many fucking words in my head I want to tell you. They're clamoring to get out, I swear to God. They're beating drums and yelling and they never stop."

"But you can't say any of them." Alaska held her hand out under the rain. The cold felt good. 

"No, I- It's dangerous."

"Talking to me is dangerous?"

"The inside of my head is dangerous."

Of course it was. The inside of Katya's head had always been dangerous, and Alaska liked her that way. "I don't care," she said. "I want to know!"

"That's not- " Katya sighed. "Okay, let's try a new analogy. I feel like I'm on a tightrope. Which is better than the blade I was on before." She paused before saying, "Hang on, let me come up with some more cliches and I'll get right back to you."

Fuck the cliches, Alaska thought, her heart tightening. "Do I make you feel- "

"No, you don't make me anything. But this tightrope. There's no net, and there's sharks on one side. And on the other side there's--something really great. Most days, I think I know which way I'm going to fall. But some days I don't."

 _I don't make you feel anything,_ Alaska thought, _but you make me feel **everything**._ It was so fucking unfair.

"I think," Alaska said delicately, "I think nobody ever knows a hundred percent which way they're going to fall."

Sighing, Katya said, "That's probably true." Then after a moment, solemnly, "Justin. It was never really about my friend."

"No?" 

"No. I mean, I was upset. But really it just made me think about- "

After a short silence, Alaska gave her an out. "Everything else?" Maybe they'd never get to a point where they could be fully honest with each other.

"About what's important to me," Katya with finality.

"Oh," Alaska said. She wanted to ask. She desperately wanted to ask. But she didn't. This was as open as they'd been since they started talking again. Katya would say all of those other words if she ever wanted to, and Alaska had to live with that.

xxx

This was what Alaska didn't ask: "I want it to be me. I want to be what's important to you. I want to be the way you want to fall."

This was what Katya didn't say: "I didn't mean 'what's important to me.' I meant 'what I can't live without.'" And what she couldn't live without wasn't drugs or alcohol, maybe for the first time in her adult life. What she couldn't live without was something almost as dangerous, but a hell of a lot sexier. 

xxx

A few days later, Katya called Alaska at a time Alaska normally wouldn't be awake. But Alaska's schedule had ticked back towards regular human time a bit now that she was staying in one place, and Katya had pumped herself up for this. She'd talked to her sponsor, and she had to do this before the right words left her head again.

She got voicemail and looked down at the notes she'd written ahead of time, trying to condense some of them.

"I have to tell you something," she announced, then winced. "No, that sounds bad. It's not bad for you. Actually it's not bad for me, either, but it's not- Just call me, okay? This is such a stupid message, I'm sorry."

It was not her best verbal moment. She looked around her apartment, folded up her notes, and went to get coffee just to have something to do.

Alaska called just as Katya was climbing back up the stairs, coffee in hand. 

"I don't know," Alaska said, but she was poking fun, or trying to. "That sounded pretty bad."

"I know, sorry." Inside now, Katya went and sat by her window, in case she needed a distraction. "Do you have time to talk?"

"I'm checking out at Trader Joe's. I can find a table outside. What's up and why are you nervous?" There was a pause while Alaska said thank you, and then Alaska spoke with her mouth full. "I had no breakfast in my house, sorry."

"You're a growing girl, of course you have to eat. Okay." Katya breathed deep. She should have done yoga instead of going for coffee. She decided she needed to get something out of one of her bedside drawers, and kept talking while she went there and back. "All those words I couldn't tell you? Or some of them. Most of them."

"You sound weird but I'm listening," Alaska said. She was still chewing, but Katya heard the hope in her voice. She could tell Alaska was outside now by the traffic in the background. 

"It's- not comfortable," Katya explained. She sat down again and flipped through Alaska's Chicago sketchbook. "But it's usually good in the end. You said you'd done some reading about the twelve steps? Which I'm grateful for, by the way."

"Of course I did. I don't want to fuck it up again."

"No, it was stupid of me to expect you to know, but that's on the list," Katya said. She'd reached the sketch of herself sleeping, and she kept it open.

"There's a list?" Alaska asked.

"There's a list," Katya confirmed. She stuffed her hand into her pocket to get it out. "But I need to explain first. Do you remember anything about the ninth step?" 

Alaska said nothing for a moment. "Remind me. I don't know the numbers."

"The one about making amends," Katya said.

"To me?" She was really starting to sound concerned now. "You did that like a year ago."

"Things have changed a bit since then," Katya said drily. And there'd be no cliches or analogies this time.

"You don't need to apologize to me, Brian."

Katya chuckled. "No, I literally do need to and it's not an apology, it's- Remember I told you it doesn't matter how it's received?"

Alaska chuckled, too. "Forgiveness is not the goal?"

"Forgiveness is not the goal. Also, you can hang up on me whenever you want if I'm driving you crazy."

"I'm not going to hang up," Alaska said warmly. It felt like she was reaching out to Katya through the phone, leaning forward to get close and hear better. "I'd love to listen."

So Katya told her.

xxx

It was a few weeks later and Alaska was in New Orleans, only one time zone from Katya. They were both in bed, both comfortable and relaxed; Alaska could hear it in Katya's voice. They'd been laughing and teasing almost like they used to, and Alaska was still wired from the stage.

So was her neighbor. "That bitch," she said fondly. "Detox is next door and they're banging the bed against the fucking wall."

Katya laughed. "Detox still the queen of trade?"

"Always. Ugh, I can't. I'm going to go sit by the window until they're done." So she did. She could still hear them, but at least the chair wasn't shaking like the bed was, and now she could hear the crowds outside, too, the drunks hollering for beads like it was actually Mardi Gras and not just a show put on for tourists. 

"No trade for you?" Katya asked diffidently. The insecurity was subtle, more subtle than it might have been a few months ago, but it was there. Alaska thought that was a good sign. "Meeting and greeting all those men?"

They'd been a lot more open with one another since Katya had told her about the ninth step. They'd talked about hopes, fears, shit they were ashamed of and shit they were proud of, their families, what they did every day. But there were still a few topics they hadn't addressed.

Alaska took the chance to address this one before Katya could back down. She was so, so tired of being careful with every word. "I do meet men," she said. "Mostly I meet teenage girls, but I meet more men than I ever wanted. And they ask."

Katya took a long breath. "What do they ask?"

Alaska chuckled. She could feel a new tension over the satellite connection, and she wanted to lighten it a bit. "What do you think they ask?" she said. "The same thing you asked me once."

"Wanna fuck?"

"That," Alaska said, chuckling again, happy that Katya felt secure enough to tease her. "I'll tell you what I tell them, okay?"

"Is what you tell them yes?"

"No, of course not." They hadn't spoken at all about trade, but Alaska thought it should have been obvious that she wasn't indulging. She sighed. "I tell them I'm really hung up on this one guy I can't stop thinking about."

She heard a little gasp on the other end of the line and hated how much it hurt, that Katya was still surprised. "Lucky guy," Katya said. "You thinking about him."

"Damn lucky," Alaska teased. "And you know what else I tell them?"

Katya breathed out, "No," and the television noise in the background went quiet. 

"I tell them he's the smartest and the funniest and the saddest person I know," Alaska said. It felt dangerous. Her hands were sweating. "And I tell them I want to be with this guy all the time, but that's not what he wants."

"Sounds fake, but okay."

Alaska laughed without meaning to. It was so fucking Katya, deflecting like she always did. "Shut up and listen to me, I'm trying to tell you something," she said. "This guy. When I fell apart he held me together with duct tape and lash glue, and he doesn't think anybody would want to do that for him."

Katya said nothing, and there was a shout and a particularly loud bang against the wall in Alaska's room. 

"He doesn't even know how amazing he is," Alaska continued. "He thinks he doesn't deserve somebody who's just for him, but he does. He deserves it so much." 

"Just for him?" Katya asked slowly. She cleared her throat. "His very own person, just for him?"

"His very own human shaped person," Alaska said. And she knew Katya would want to make the joke, so she said with a sigh, "You can say it."

Katya blurted out, "Horse shaped person!" 

Alaska laughed in relief, and finished, "And that's why trade is no good anymore."

"Because of the guy," Katya said.

"Because of the guy."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." For fuck's sake, Alaska thought.

She heard Katya breathing deeply. "Maybe," Katya said, "this guy isn't used to thinking about himself like that."

"No, he's not. But I'd tell him every day if I could."

"Hold on," Katya said. "I'll see if he's available to come to the phone."

"Oh, my **God** ," Alaska said, amused and annoyed and unbearably fond. "You are **work** , do you know that?"

Katya laughed again. "So are you. Though I have to admit, you're a lot less work than you used to be."

"You're more work than you used to be."

"We traded off," Katya said. "Seems fair."

It was fair, Alaska thought. It was fair that Katya had supported Alaska for so long and now Alaska was supporting Katya.

But it wasn't fair that Katya was the only one getting everything she wanted. She got her friend back. She got to be safe and comfortable and not take any risks whatsoever. 

Alaska felt like she was risking everything in every phone call. Alaska wasn't getting what she wanted. Alaska wasn't safe or comfortable.

And neither of them was getting what they **needed**. She was sure of that.

"I know," she said dangerously, "you can't say all the things yet. But I have a lot of things I want to say, too."

The other end of the line was silent. Next door wasn't, thought. Next door was laughing. Next door was just trade, but it was a hell of a lot more than Alaska was getting.

"Can I say the things?" she asked.

"I- " Then more silence.

"I'll take that as a fucking no," Alaska said, her face and her eyes burning. "I have to get some sleep. Goodnight."

"Wait--Justin- " 

"Call me back when you're actually ready to talk."

"No, I- "

She hung up.

xxx

Katya called right back, but Alaska's phone was already off. She dithered over whether to leave a voicemail until the beep went off, and then she dithered some more. 

"I don't know what to- " she tried. "No, you're right. I- "

She dithered so long that the voicemail decided she was done talking and beeped again.

"Fuck," she said as she hung up. She threw her phone on the couch, furious but too poor to replace the damn thing. "Fuck!" she said again, as images of everything she'd lose if she let Alaska go flooded her exhausted brain.

Was she ready? She wanted to be. But was she?

xxx

Alaska had an early flight in the morning, and Katya would be at work all day. She resolved to spend that time figuring out her shit.

She told her mother about the human- or horse-shaped person. She told her therapist, and her sponsor, and the only two customers she had in the store that afternoon. She was going to crack jokes about it on stage someday, and for years afterwards. For now, though, it was no joke. It was fucking terrifying.

Alaska wanted to be her human person. Alaska _was_ her human person, whether Katya wanted her to be or not, and had been for a long fucking time. What would it mean to let her in once and for all?

Her therapist asked her to define it. Katya told her to fuck off but did agree to write about it in her journal.

 _Your very own human-shaped person,_ she wrote, her hand shaking. _Your very own human-shaped person is a person who can be trusted with all of your secrets._

She looked up and out the window at the traffic and pedestrians. Fear was making her poetic. Maybe she should be writing songs, too. She drew some bullet points on the page.

  * _A person,_ she wrote, _whose secrets you want to protect._
  * _A person who is so completely imperfect but wants to be, just for you._
  * _A person whose heart you want to cradle delicately in your hands, whose heart you want to tuck inside your chest next to your own, partnered and safe and beating together._



And then, after a while:

  * _A person who fucking loves you._



_He loves you, you fucking idiot._ She underlined it three times.

Her boss called to ask for an update. Katya lied and said everything was going great--really she hadn't done a single thing on the day's to-do list, but that wasn't unusual--and gave him the numbers from the cash register.

  * _A person,_ she wrote when she went back to her journal, _who you love more than anything. Or you will, if you let yourself._



Then she cried a little, and tried to call Alaska, but Alaska's phone was still off.

"Pull your shit self together, bitch," she said out loud.

Alaska had said, once, that it wasn't Katya's fault she was ready before her friend. Katya added, in her journal, _It wasn't her fault she was ready before you were, either._ She'd known that for months, really, but hadn't let herself feel it.

Now she felt **everything** , and it scared the crap out of her.

xxx

Alaska finally answered the phone after Katya got home from work. "Hi, Brian," she sighed.

"So about this human-shaped person," Katya started, without saying hello.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Alaska said. There were other voices in the background, and then suddenly there weren't; Katya hadn't timed this well. "Don't fucking do that. I love you, but I'm not in the mood to- "

"You what?" Katya asked. She'd heard it, but she had to make sure she hadn't heard wrong.

"Fuck, was I not supposed to say that, either?" Alaska asked.

"No, you- "

"I love you, okay? I fucking love the shit out of you. I've worked so fucking hard not to say it and scare you off again. But I am not in the mood to tiptoe around you today."

"Okay," Katya said, thinking she'd been dismissed and telling herself that it couldn't be personal. Love had been mentioned. Love had been mentioned no fewer than three times.

"That doesn't mean I don't want to talk!" Alaska said quickly. Her tone went back to the caution Katya was more familiar with as she spoke again. "I always want to talk to you, even when I don't want to talk to you."

"Okay," Katya said. She'd always wanted to talk to Alaska, too, even when she couldn't. And even now, when she felt like she might throw up from nerves.

"Really? Because I am having a shit day and I'm absolutely not up for anything but brutal honesty."

Katya had **missed** this. She'd missed fiery Alaska. She hadn't even known she'd missed her.

Fiery Alaska was hot as hell.

"Is that the asshole?" someone shouted at Alaska. It was muffled, by a door, Katya assumed.

"He's not an asshole!" Alaska shouted back.

"Thank you," Katya said. 

"Don't prove me wrong, bitch." Alaska said, relaxing a little.

"I'm here," Katya said, plugging her other ear with a finger. She was outside, on her fire escape. Dusk was almost over and the early show was on stage downstairs, and they'd just turned up the volume on Katy Perry. Katya hated Katy Perry. "Tell me about your shit day." After a moment she added, "Tell me everything."

"You really want to know?" she asked Katya. It sounded more like stalling than doubt.

"Yes, I want to know!"

"It's so dumb."

"I doubt that."

"I have not slept at fucking all," Alaska said. 

"I'm sorry." Katya hadn't slept, either.

"I have half the WeHo queens in my fucking living room, because Detox told them I was depressed."

"I'm sorry," Katya said again.

"Shut up. The fucking airline lost one of my suitcases. And Willam had a fight with his husband and found a new boytoy, and they can't keep their hands off each other."

"Blowjobs on your pristine white couch, or what?"

"Kissing! Hand holding!"

Smiling, but avoiding a laugh, Katya said, "I had no idea this was an issue for you."

"It's not! I'm just jealous."

"You're jealous of hand holding?"

"Yes! This is what my fantasies consist of these days! I want to hold hands, and I want a kiss on the cheek, and I want a hug." Alaska took a couple moments to breathe before adding, "And I'm so fucking pissed off with you right now."

Katya shut her eyes and said calmly, "I'm surprised it's taken this long."

"No, fuck you," fiery Alaska said. "This is not about you being an insecure little bitch. I fucking love you and I'm not just going to get over you and give you an easy out! Do I have to pass a test or something?"

"No! Of course not!" 

"Well it fucking feels that way! I'm sick of measuring every word and worrying that you'll freak out and how long do I have to wait, anyway?"

"There's no test," Katya said, and heard Alaska huff. "If I was testing anyone, it was me."

"Fuck that," Alaska said. "If I can't get a hug, I at least want the guy I'm in love with to believe I'm in love with his stupid ass."

"I- " Just like in their last conversation, Katya couldn't get a single word into her head, let alone from her brain to her mouth.

"Fuck this, I'm hanging up," Alaska said. "I've got shit to do."

"Don't hang up!" Katya said desperately. For Alaska to be this angry about it, it couldn't be something she'd pulled out of her ass. "Did I say that? I don't remember, but- "

"Bullshit," Alaska said. that way. "Bullshit, you don't remember."

Katya searched and searched and came up blank. "I don't- " 

"I lied. You **are** an asshole."

"I surely am," Katya said, "and I'm sure I was. I don't doubt I said it, but I don't remember. There's a lot of shit I don't remember from last fall!"

"On the phone! You said you didn't dare believe that I loved you! What the fuck was I supposed to think? It **hurts** , Brian. It hurts that you still think that about me."

"I don't," Katya said quietly, but Alaska kept talking.

"Do you really still think I don't know what I want?"

"No, I don't think that. I believe you."

 **"What?"** Alaska spat.

"I believe you. I know you love me, Justin."

"Well halle-fucking-lujah."

Katya's eyes started prickling. Had she really made Alaska think that? All this time? "I'm sorry. I thought you- "

"You thought I could read your fucking mind?"

"I don't know, I. Look. There was a lot of shit I blamed you for that was really about me, okay? My head was a fucking hurricane! I didn't think anyone could- "

"Oh, here we go." Alaska sounded like she might hang up again.

"No, listen," Katya said. "Part of me will always think I'm not worth it. You know that. But you--I'd wanted you so fucking long, and I couldn't **let** myself believe it at first. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to--I thought it couldn't be real, that you'd wise up and get over me."

"I told you I'm not going to get over you!"

"I know! I know that now. I believe you. But at the time I--it was **me**. It was me doubting myself. It wasn't about you at all."

"It would have been nice to know that!"

It would have been nice if Katya had known that. "I had a hell of a lot of processing to do, okay?"

"Yeah, that's- " All the anger leached out of Alaska's voice and she sounded small and vulnerable. "Of course you did. I had processing to do, too. I guess it just looked different." 

"Yeah," Katya agreed with a sigh. "I didn't know how to tell you what I felt, because I didn't know how to tell me what I felt."

"Fuck, I wanted so hard to make it easier for you. I didn't know how."

"I know. I know how hard you tried." It felt like Katya's heart was in her throat, like she might puke it up and leave it on the floor to rot. "You did make it easier, but I- " She let that dangle. She needed to breathe.

Alaska must have sensed that Katya wanted to say something big. She asked softly, "What, Brian?"

"I don't doubt **you**. I'm just- " Katya chickened out. She was still afraid to say the something big. "I like the human-shaped person as a concept. But I'm having some trouble with it."

There was a moment of quiet. "Trouble with what? With whether you deserve one?" Alaska asked finally. "Or whether you want one?"

"That is a very insightful question, and I'm not happy about it."

The sigh on the other end of the line was exasperated, and Katya didn't blame her. She hedged her bets. "Let's say I'm not sure what to do with one."

"I'm not sure, either," Alaska said, and then loudly, in response to a banging on the door, "I said leave me alone!" She returned quickly to Katya. "Last time I did this it ended up in a bloodbath."

That was a surprise. Katya had thought Alaska had it all figured out. "You're scared, too?"

"Of course I'm scared! It's scary. It's terrifying."

Still trying to come to grips with this revelation, Katya just said, "It really is."

She heard Alaska breathe deep. "My therapist says it's always scary, it's always going to be scary, and all you can do is hold hands, and hope, and jump."

"That's gorgeous," Katya said. "Holy fuck, that's gorgeous."

She could hear disappointment in Alaska's chuckle.

"My therapist," Katya admitted, and shivered as a gust of salty wind all the way from the harbor blew through her, "isn't that poetic. She says I need to get off my ass and not let this one get away."

"I am going to buy that woman a fucking Christmas present," Alaska said.

"It's April!"

"I have closets."

"Want," Katya managed to say softly.

"What? Closets?"

"Want or deserve. I'm not a hundred percent on the deserving yet. But I'm very, very clear on the wanting."

"You," Alaska said. "You want your own person?"

"That. I want that. That's why I called."

"And do you- Do you have any candidates in mind?"

"One," Katya said. Her heart was pounding. She clambered back through the window and sat on the floor underneath. "He has no ass, but I've finally decided I can live with that. He deserves a human-shaped person, too."

"Really?" Alaska breathed. "And do you still- "

"Of course I still love you. I never stopped."

"Oh, my God," Alaska said. "Fuck." She sniffled, and made a low sound in her throat, and asked, "Do you even know how long it's been since I touched you?"

Oh, Katya knew. Katya knew exactly. "I do, actually," she said. "You held my hand on that fucking sidewalk and it **burned**. Because I had to say no to the one thing I wanted most in the world, and I couldn't even admit that to myself yet." Her eyes were burning, too.

She heard a hitch in Alaska's breathing. "When you said," Alaska started. She sounded very small. "About what was important to you. Was it me?"

"Of course it was you," Katya said quickly. "That was one of the things my brain was clamoring to say. No, it was at least ten of the things."

"Fuck," Alaska said tearfully. "Why are you so far away?"

"It's still too soon," Katya had to point out.

Alaska sniffled again and asked, with humor in her voice, "And what's the exact date again? I should pass it on to your candidate."

"That would be cheating," Katya said with a smile.

"Don't make me scroll through a year's worth of texts."

A year's worth? "You keep all my texts?"

"Of course I do! For a while there, that was all I had." 

Oh. Wow. "I- " 

Alaska interrupted with, "Don't fucking apologize." 

"I'm not," Katya managed to say. "I'm trying too hard not to cry."

"Jesus Christ, Brian. All these bitches are here and they already think you're a jerk and I'm a fucking mess."

"Okay, that I **am** going to apologize for."

"No, you're not, shut up."

Katya laughed out loud at that and said, "You still performing tonight?"

"Yes. Fuck. I should make one of them go on for me instead."

"Or you could kick them out and take a damn nap and just enjoy the fucking stage. You know you want to." 

"You bitch," Alaska said. "I'm yawning just thinking about that."

"I have to drag up anyway." She wanted to keep talking, but she still needed to make a living. "Facetime me tomorrow? And every day after that?"

"Okay," Alaska said with a chuckle. "So about that anniversary date."

"I'm hanging up now. Sleep well and break a leg."

She didn't wait to hear Alaska say goodbye. But a couple minutes later, after she'd gone into the bathroom and almost decided what color to do her eyes, she got a text.

"I can't believe you fucking hung up on me. Thanks, bitch." 

Another minute later, Alaska texted a single red heart. Katya texted one back.

xxx

Alaska turned off her phone and didn't touch it again until she woke up to get ready for her show.

The only text she cared about was from Katya, and it only said one thing: "5/5."

It was too soon to make plans. It was too soon for anything. She added the date to her calendar anyway, so she'd remember every single year.

xxx

"Happy birthday!" Alaska shouted on facetime.

Katya was beaming. "Aw, thank you!"

"And happy almost-a-year sober!"

"I am way happier about that," Katya said.

"It's a big deal! Can I say I'm proud of you?"

"I'm proud of me, too!" Katya's smile actually got bigger. "And I **love** my present. I hugged it and slept with it and pissed on it, I love it so much."

"That's a lot of love," Alaska teased. "Especially since the internet tells me it was delivered ten minutes ago."

"Did you really remember an absurdly expensive art book I loved **last year** and go back to buy it for me?"

"Gurl, I bought that book the next fucking day. I just didn't know when I was going to give it to you." 

Katya seemed unable to reply. Her cheeks reddened. "If you are trying to seduce me," she finally said, "you're doing a damn fine job of it." Her voice sounded heated, in a way Alaska hadn't heard in so long.

"I'm not." Alaska grinned helplessly. "But I'd like to. So what are you doing today?"

"Lunch with friends and dinner with my parents, and in between a whole lot of time I don't know what to do with." She left her kitchen and sat on the couch, and Alaska was delighted to see the little rabbit on the back. "Until last year I'd always been in an altered state on my birthday. There are a lot more hours when you're clean, aren't there?"

Alaska laughed. "There really are. Did I mention I'm proud of you?"

"Shut up. Chicago tomorrow, right? Excited to be on the road ever so briefly again?"

She really was. Sitting at home making shady reaction vids to season 6 was not, she'd decided, making the best use of her artistic talents. "You know I'm lost without permanently drenched hip pads." 

"That is so sexy."

Alaska laughed. "Boston in June. You can see for yourself."

"Really?" Katya asked. "Is that when you plan to seduce me?" 

Katya was flirting, in the low, dry tone that meant it wasn't a performance. It gave Alaska courage. "I'd, um, I'd love to see you sooner, but if you don't want to- "

Katya interrupted her. "I do. Want to."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Then how soon is soon?" Alaska spoke quickly, not giving herself a chance to back down. "Because I'm in New York on Saturday, and I could stop in Boston for a day or two first. Or after." 

"I. You want to fly out here just to see me? On--Thursday is- "

"I know it is and of course I want to, dumbass. Can I buy you dinner?"

"And you want to go on a **date**?" Katya said. "With me?"

"I'd like to, yeah."

"Well, we'll see how the sex goes first."

"Sex yes, dinner maybe?" Alaska asked.

"Isn't that how everybody does it?"

"You can cancel anytime, you know." Alaska didn't want Katya to cancel. Her heart might break again if Katya canceled, but the instinct to treat Katya's mental health with kid gloves was still strong. "An hour before, you can cancel. I show up at your door, you can cancel."

But Katya said, and she looked and sounded strong and confident, "I don't plan on cancelling. I- " Her eyes widened, and there was a slight gasp. "Shit, I'm sorry. I've got another call and I have to take it. Text me later?"

"Yeah, of course," Alaska said. Katya had already disconnected. 

That was odd. But Alaska was too excited to worry about it.

xxx

Alaska called from Katya's doorstep, and heard Katya thundering down the stairs without even answering first. Katya threw open the door dramatically, pressed "accept," and put her phone to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Excited to see me?" Alaska said into her own phone.

"Yes," Katya said. "Now hang up and get the fuck upstairs."

She didn't wait for Alaska to obey, just grabbed her hand and dragged her up the steps. Alaska laughed the whole way.

They were barely inside when Katya sucked in Alaska's breath with a kiss, and reached for Alaska's fly.

"No," Alaska said, still laughing. "Nope. No, no, no. We are going to do this right."

"Shut up and kiss me," Katya said.

The kissing was a revelation. Alaska hadn't known just how much she was dying to make out with Katya, and had been since at least last summer, the day Katya had left her on the sidewalk after the museum. But she took a step back. "I told you I was going to take you out to dinner, and I'm going to take you out to fucking dinner."

Katya pouted. "But I've never fucked someone who was in love with me before and I'm **dying** to see how this turns out." 

"I can tell you exactly how it's going to turn out," Alaska said, standing back so Katya couldn't kiss her again. "At least two orgasms and probably some crying."

"And I've missed you so much and I really want to fuck you."

Damn, that whine was effective. Katya had picked it up from Alaska, and would probably only ever use it on Alaska. 

"For fuck's sake," Alaska said. "We haven't even had our first date and I can't say no to you, you minx."

"That's an insult to minxes," Katya murmured as she stepped closer and went in for another kiss. Her hands wandered again, and before Alaska knew it, her dick was out and hard in Katya's hand.

Alaska moaned and pulled just far enough away from Katya's lips to ask, "Can we at least go to your bed and not rut on your filthy rug?"

Katya smiled against Alaska's lips, but she didn't move. So Alaska started nudging her backwards, barely avoiding furniture as they laughed into one another's mouths.

"Could never have managed **this** drunk," Katya said. "Very impressive."

"Thank you."

Once they were in the other room, standing next to the bed, Alaska got stuck.

They'd rarely kissed--a few pecks after sex, nothing special--and it was a good thing they hadn't. Because kissing Katya was--well, Alaska was absolutely in love, if she'd had any doubt. She could swear her lips were tingling like in those romance novels she'd hidden in her closet in high school. She wanted to pour all the love she had for Katya into every kiss, every touch, every sigh, because nobody had ever had the sense to do that for her before.

"Fuck," she moaned, and kept right on kissing Katya. 

Katya "mmm"ed and laughed and didn't stop kissing Alaska, either.

They could get one thing done, though. Katya was efficiently stripping even as their faces were still glued together, and Alaska decided it was a good idea. Erotic stripteases could wait. She got naked in just a few seconds, and Katya laughed some more.

"You're so gorgeous," Katya said, wrapping her arms around Alaska so their dicks rubbed together. "I don't think I've ever told you that."

"You haven't. I'd remember." Alaska nipped at Katya's lips with her teeth and noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that the rabbit had been moved to Katya's side of the bed. She grinned. "You're more gorgeous."

"Oh, fuck," Katya said. "You're a **romantic** ," and they laughed into another long kiss.

Eventually the size of their erections and the friction as they moved together became too much to ignore, and Katya pulled Alaska onto the bed with her. She sat back on her heels and looked Alaska up and down. 

"Gorgeous," Katya said again.

Alaska smirked and said, "You are so full of crap."

"I'm not," Katya said, straightfaced. "I douched."

"Oh, my **God** ," Alaska said. "Then get the damn lube and let me fuck you already."

Katya smirked back and said, "You know where the damn lube is, bitch."

Alaska shoved her aside to reach the drawer. "Happy?"

"Oh, extremely." And she watched Alaska stretch out on her back again.

"Cowgirl?" Alaska asked as she unrolled the condom and covered it in lube, too impatient to make it fun. "Missionary? Some gymnastic move that will make me ache for a week?" 

"I like that idea," Katya said. "But let's save it until we're not so desperate." She swung a leg over Alaska's hips and lay on top of her, chest to chest, to kiss some more. And some more.

"May I remind you," Alaska asked, short of breath, "that you're the one who said we were desperate?" She swirled her lube-soaked fingers around Katya's hole. "Need help?"

Katya moaned and arched her back. "No, but keep doing that for a while."

Alaska did, but she also slid her other hand between their bodies to palm Katya's dick and then cradle her balls. "Fuck me tomorrow?" 

Katya sat straight up, all business. "Are you staying for two nights? I was too horny to ask."

"Two nights if you'll have me," Alaska said. "Now am I fucking you, or not?"

"I guess," Katya said, feigning disinterest. "Now?

"Yes, now!"

"Are you sure? Are you ready?"

"Now, now, now, now," Alaska chanted, right up until Katya started to take her inside.

"Oh, fuck," they both said at the same time, and fell into shared laughter. It didn't stop Katya from sliding down, down, until Alaska was balls deep inside her.

"So good," Alaska half-moaned, but she managed to keep her eyes open. "I missed you so fucking much and you really are gorgeous."

"Now who's full of crap?"

Alaska couldn't answer. She was lost as they moved together. They'd had plenty of sex over the past four years and some of it had been fantastic. But now her chest was warm and cozy in a way it had never been before, her brain was pleasantly hazy in a way it had never been before, and she was free to grab Katya's hands to get her attention, look up, and say, "I love you, you fucking cunt."

Katya smiled. She glowed. She said in her filthiest voice, "I love you, too, you fucking bitch."

Suddenly Alaska was moments from coming. But she wanted Katya to come first, something she'd never worried about before. She held her breath and clenched her teeth while she let go of Katya's hands, to pump her dick instead. 

Katya wrapped both hands around Alaska's and they worked Katya's body together until she came, soft as silk. Then Katya bent down to kiss Alaska, at the same time as she bore down and squeezed tight, and Alaska came, too. Not in a rush, like so many of their encounters had been, but peacefully, and at exactly the right time.

"Mmm," Katya said a few minutes later. "That was nice." She rose up and off Alaska to kneel beside her again, and took care of the condom.

"Teamwork," Alaska said, enjoying the laughter in Katya's eyes. " **Now** can I take you on a proper fucking date?"

"I don't know," Katya said, and Alaska's blood pressure started to increase before she saw the expression on Katya's face. "I think you need to know what you're getting yourself into before you make a decision."

"Pretty sure I already do," Alaska said, happy to indulge her. "But shoot."

Katya lay down again, on her side, hands under her cheek on the pillow. Alaska mirrored her and twined their legs together again.

"First of all," Katya said, "I'm a prostitute. You are aware of this, right?"

"Yes, Vivian Ward, I do know that."

"And I'm kind of a bitch."

"I know," Alaska said. "It's in the job description."

"Prostitute?" Katya asked, puzzled.

"Drag queen."

"Ah," Katya said. "I'm horribly jealous about you getting on TV before me."

"You're not, but let's say you are."

"Shhh," Katya said. "I have a really hard time taking anything seriously."

"I like that in a person," Alaska said.

Katya kicked her. " **Shhh**! You're not doing this right. I have zero taste in boy clothes."

"I know. I'm the one who told you that."

"You're not the only one. I don't own a single thing worth more than $500."

"I know."

Katya smiled at her, a reward for finally picking up on her role in this conversation. "My apartment is a risk to human life and health sometimes." 

"Not a moral failing," Alaska said. Katya just raised an eyebrow. "Right," Alaska said. "I know."

"I'm a picky eater and I really don't like cheese."

"I know." 

"I'm a bad sleeper." 

"I know," Alaska said patiently, playing along. Wherever Katya was headed was sure to be either hilarious, or super fucking important.

"I say I'm vers, but I like topping a **lot** more than bottoming."

"I know."

"Wait, if I'm Vivian Ward does that make you Richard Gere?"

"Oh, my **God** ," Alaska laughed.

"I have conversations like that!" Katya said. "That's the kind of conversation I have!"

"I **know**."

Katya scrunched up her face as she said the next one. "My brain lies to me all the time."

"I know." 

"Did I mention about the cheese?"

"You told me about the cheese, yes."

And finally, finally, Katya got up the nerve to get to the point. She closed her eyes and said, "I've never had my own person before and I still think love is really weird."

Alaska touched Katya's cheek and waited for her to open her eyes before saying, "Honey, I **know**."

"I'm not--did you just call me honey unironically?"

Alaska chuckled. She hadn't even noticed. "I guess I did," and she gave Katya a quick kiss. "Can I list all of my faults now?"

"Nah," Katya said. "I know them already."

"I take it all back," Alaska said. "I want nothing to do with you ever again."

Katya broke out laughing. "Too late! You've got me!" 

"Yes, I have," Alaska said, pouring as much emotion into the words as she could. 

Katya sniffed and looked away again. "You really do want? I'm the human person you want?"

" **Yes** , I really- Are you crying?"

"I think I am. Fuck."

"Oh, honey," Alaska said. She slid closer to wrap her arms around Katya, who really was crying now.

"Oh, God, you're doing it again," Katya said.

"Sorry." Alaska laughed. "Should I stop?"

"No, don't stop," Katya said through a mixture of tears and laughter. "Fuck, when you said crying, I thought it would be you."

"I'm sure it will be me soon."

"I'm so afraid of screwing up. And I need you to understand that I might have to walk out on an argument and go to a meeting."

"I will do my absolute best to understand that," Alaska promised. "And I'm afraid, too. Afraid is okay. We're holding hands and jumping, remember?"

Katya slid a hand down Alaska's arm to grasp her fingers tight. Alaska kissed her again, and pet her hair the way Katya liked.

"Now," Alaska said, "can I buy you fucking dinner already, before we both starve?

"I don't know," Katya said, pulling back to look at Alaska with mischief in her eyes. "I'm not sure I'm really that into you."

Alaska kicked her. "You should know that I don't put out on the first date."

Grinning, Katya asked, "How about the second date?"

"The second date is reserved for public fellatio."

That made Katya laugh so hard she had to flail her hands. Alaska reluctantly let them go.

Eventually, Katya settled and tilted her forehead onto Alaska's. "Okay," she said. "I guess you can buy me dinner now."

"Oh, thank God," Alaska said.

xxx

Katya woke groggily the next morning, disentangled her limbs from the other naked body in her bed, and shoved herself upright. But when she reached for her lighter and cigarettes, the little gift box caught her eye. She took it from the nightstand and opened it slowly.

They'd eventually made it out to dinner the night before, Katya finally letting Alaska pay in what she thought was a delightfully symbolic gesture, and Alaska had quietly handed over the box while they waited for their food.

"You already gave me a present!" Katya had said.

Alaska had looked like she might burst out what was inside before Katya could even see it. "That was for your birthday. This is different. Open it." 

It was a pair of gold cufflinks with bronze faces, a solid B enraged on one side and an ornate v.v.xiii on the other. A present that was clearly for Brian, not for Katya.

"Did you know...?" Katya had gasped, at dinner. 

"That bronze is for the one-year chip? Of course I knew."

Now, sitting up in bed with her bottom half still under the covers and Alaska stretched out beside her, Katya touched both Bs with her thumb, and turned one of the links over to touch the number. She didn't have a reason to wear them, but she'd find one. Or, as Alaska had said, "For when you have actual clients instead of my stupid ass." Katya had immediately changed the subject.

It was already midday--they'd had a lot of talking and fucking to do, relearning one another's bodies in this new context--but they had nowhere to be until Katya's show that night. Katya closed the box and put it aside, and picked up her phone instead. 

When she read the voicemail she squealed louder than she ever thought she could.

Alaska jolted awake and blinked up at her. Katya squealed again, flailing her free hand and kicking her feet under the sheet.

"Are you dying?" Alaska asked. "Should I call an ambulance?"

Katya hesitated. She hadn't told Alaska this whole time. The interviews and the psych eval had gone so well that she was afraid to even voice the possibility, and then she and Alaska had been in such a tentative place since last fall. 

But Alaska was there, now, Alaska was in her fucking bed and in fucking love with her, and the voicemail felt like an exclamation point. Katya bounced a little and handed the phone over.

Alaska only had to glance at the screen before she looked wide-eyed up at Katya. "Is that- ? That's- "

Katya bit down hard on both of her lips to keep from squealing again and nodded fast.

"You haven't said a word!" Alaska said. 

"I know. I'm sorry. I just didn't want to jinx it." She was still bouncing. "They had me out in LA once when you called. I'm sorry."

Alaska sat up next to her, still looking confused. "You said you weren't sending in a tape this year!"

"I wasn't. I didn't. They asked me to."

"They **asked** you?" 

"Strongly suggested."

A smile was slowly taking over Alaska's face. She asked, "When?"

"January. We weren't talking then. I'm sorry, I didn't like lying to you." Katya bit her lip. "Didn't you and Sharon find out in the first week of May?"

"We did. Oh, my God, they want you! They love you! You're so awesome." She threw her arms around Katya and squeezed. "I'm so fucking happy for you. I'm happier for you than I was for me!"

"It's not a done deal," Katya said, half heartedly shoving Alaska away. "They could want to set up a Skype call to say no."

"They won't." Alaska was bouncing, too, now, and flailing her hands the same way Katya did. "You just get a regular call if it's a no."

Katya knew about the terrible day when Sharon got a yes and Alaska got a no. "I know **you** got a regular call." She grabbed Alaska's hands and forced them down, holding tight to ask her to sit still. "But that was two years ago. It might be different now."

"You're right," Alaska admitted with a frown. "It is somewhere just inside the realm of possibility. But- "

"No, no, no," Katya said. "I can't get any more excited than I am right now. Just in case."

"You have more self-control than me, gurl."

"Let me count the ways in which that is un-fucking-true."

Alaska grinned at her. "Are you going to call them back?"

"Of course I am!" Katya paused with her thumb over the call back icon and looked at Alaska again. "I'm going to set up a time, and then we're not going to mention it again, okay?"

Alaska pouted.

"And you are going to leave the house before they Skype me," Katya said, "so you won't distract me with your wiles."

"I have wiles?"

"And you are **not** going to bug me about it until I call and say you can come back."

"I don't like this rule." Alaska was starting to whine.

"Do you want me to do nice things to your asshole before you leave tomorrow?"

"Yes," Alaska said miserably, as if she was signing her life over to the straights forever.

"Okay," Katya said. "Get in the shower. I'm going to call and I'll tell you what time, and that's **it**."

"This is so unfair," Alaska said. 

Katya shooed her out of the bedroom. "And don't you dare start the shower and then try to listen at the door!"

Peeking back through the doorway, Alaska asked, "Can I use your enema bulb?"

"Not if you think it's going to change my mind!" Katya said, laughing. "Go away!"

Alaska went. "You had better make this up to me!" she called before starting the shower. "And good fucking luck!"

xxx

A few weeks later, weeks that had sprinted and lagged at the same time, Katya stopped in the corridor just outside of baggage claim. She knew they'd take her phone away the second she got in the van and she didn't know if they were already waiting, so this was her last chance. She squeezed herself against the wall and out of the way of all the other passengers hurrying past.

Alaska was eight hours ahead, in Prague, and she had the night off; she'd said that she planned to go to bed early. So Katya texted instead of calling.

"Landed safe. Not terrified. Ready to kick ass."

Alaska called immediately, and Katya grinned as she answered. Alaska had her own ring and text tones now. They'd only seen one another once since the day after Katya's Skype call--Alaska had flown in for just one night, and Katya had been flighty and fussy and distracted with sewing. But they'd been talking at least once a day, and usually a lot more.

"Not asleep?" she asked Alaska.

"I'm too excited for you!" Alaska said. "You're going to do great."

"Please have the freakouts for me while I'm gone, so I don't have to."

"It's a deal. I love you so fucking much and you **are** going to kick ass."

"Stop that, you'll make me nervous. And I love you, too." It was still a little shock every time Katya said it, but it was a shock that felt good, like just the right amount of electrostim.

"I am the show's biggest fucking fan," Alaska said.

"And you know what you're talking about," Katya finished for her. "I know."

"Even if you lose faith in yourself, I have faith in you. Don't forget."

"Stop. Crying in public is humiliating."

"And," Alaska said, "I promise to love you just as much if you come home first or last."

Katya laughed. "You'd better love me more if I come home first."

"I promise."

Katya's phone dinged with a text, and she took a quick look at the notification. "They're here," she said. "Wish me luck and I'll miss you like crazy."

"Good luck!" Alaska shouted in her ear. "Kick ass!"

"Going now. Talk to you in a few days."

"You mean in five weeks."

"Somewhere in there," Katya said. "Thank you, babe. For everything."

They said goodbye, and Katya walked through the double doors.


End file.
